Tag: Sam Bankman-Fried

Crypto collapse: Binance hits reserves, FTX’s Singh sings, miners’ creative accounting, bitcoin markets are thin

This is our second post this weekend! You’ll find our latest on the crypto collapse on David’s blog. [David Gerard]

Also, please support our work via Patreon, if you haven’t already. Our stories are free to read for everyone, but if you want to help us get the word out, become subscribers. Links in post!

In this episode:

  • More documents have come out on Binance’s “Tai Chi” plan to subvert US regulation.
  • Binance appears to have been channeling bridged USDC reserves to Cumberland/DRW.
  • Senators write a scathing letter to Binance, asking for a slew of documents.
  • We told you bitcoin miners were fiddling accounts!
  • Nishad Singh, another member of SBF’s inner circle, turns against Sam.
  • Also, lawyers propose tighter bail restrictions for Sam — a flip phone and virtually no internet access.

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Crypto collapse: New Sam Bankman-Fried charges, New York targets CoinEx, Coinbase losses, Voyager, Celsius

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

“Sam Bankman-Fried walks into the courtroom. his pants split with a sound like thunder and guns and cocaine spill out all over the floor. he spins around and punches a security officer hard in the face sending him flying. he turns, sits down calmly on his chair and says, to thunderous applause from the fans gathered to hear his famous catchphrase, ‘OK your honour, here’s what I think happened’”

— Hammerite

Mycrimes.txt (2) (FINAL) (USE THIS ONE).docx.pdf

The criminal indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried has been updated, with a superseding indictment on February 23. [Superseding indictment, PDF]

The new charges are clearly informed by the cooperation of Sam’s former co-conspirators — and by his crime confession tours in the press and on Twitter.

The Federal Election Commission is now listed as a victim of Sam’s fraud, with allegations that SBF tried to buy influence over crypto regulation in Washington. 

The indictment details all the tricks that Sam (allegedly) pulled to influence both Democrats and Republicans, in concert with other FTX executives — and how he tried to conceal his influence.

Other new allegations include bank fraud. The act of misleading a bank in the course of business is a crime all by itself — such as when you accept money in the name of one entity (Alameda) for another entity (FTX), or when you set up a shell corporation (North Dimension) and lie to your bank (Silvergate) about what that shell does.

Sam also used Alameda to fill a $45 million hole in FTX US. He gave Alameda a $65 billion credit line, which allowed it unlimited access to customer funds on FTX. Customer and company funds were thoroughly commingled. 

The indictment doesn’t specify the cause of the hole in FTX US, but Sam has repeatedly claimed that FTX US was solvent. 

Sam ultimately controlled both FTX and Alameda, even after claiming to have stepped away from Alameda.

The indictment also lists billions of dollars worth of assets that have been forfeited, including multiple SBF accounts at Binance.

FTX and its subsidiaries was never a legitimate business. It was Sam’s piggy bank. 

New York goes after CoinEx

The New York Attorney General’s office is suing the CoinEx crypto exchange. The NYAG alleges that CoinEx sold securities and/or commodities, did not register with the CFTC or SEC, and misrepresented itself as registered. [Press release; Complaint, PDF; Affidavit of OAG Detective Brian Metz, PDF]

CoinEx, which is based in Hong Kong, has responded by barring all US citizens. You have until April 24 to get your cryptos off the exchange. [Twitter]

New York alleges that CoinEx offered to New York customers various cryptos that are securities — AMP, LUNA, RLY, and LBC  — while the exchange was not registered to deal in securities.

AMP is the token of Flexa, who want to use it to sell burritos. LBC is the token of video site LBRY, which the SEC recently had a slam-dunk win against in court, finding that it was absolutely the security it clearly was. Luna is the twin coin of TerraUSD, which crashed all of crypto last May.

New York says these tokens are all securities under New York’s Waldstein test: “any form of instrument used for the purpose of financing and promoting enterprises, and which is designed for investment, is a security.” They say the tokens are also securities under the federal Howey test — as LBC was recently shown to be.

It happens to be a violation of New York commercial law to call yourself an “exchange” if you offer trading in securities or commodities and you’re not registered with the CFTC or SEC.

CoinEx also failed to respond in any way to a previous NYAG subpoena — and, per General Business Law §353(1), failure to comply with a subpoena is prima facie proof that the subpoenaed entity “is or has been engaged in fraudulent practice.” 

New York wants CoinEx to block New York from its website, pay restitution, disgorgement, and costs, “and provide New York investors with the option to rescind their transactions.”

New York is bringing a “special proceeding” — it wants the court to rule on its filing. “A special proceeding goes right to the merits. The Court is required to make a summary determination upon all the pleadings, papers, and admissions to the extent that no triable issues of fact are raised.”

Why did New York go after CoinEx in particular? This complaint is detailed, but it also looks like a template. We suspect this may be the first of many such complaints against crypto platforms. CoinEx ignoring the subpoena probably annoyed New York a lot too.

The SEC previously called out each of the tokens on CoinEx that the NYAG names as securities:

  • In a July 2022 insider trading complaint against Coinbase, the SEC said AMP and RLY were securities. [Complaint, pdf] 
  • In Feb 2023, the SEC said LUNA was a security [Complaint, pdf]
  • In November 2022, the SEC won in court against LBRY on whether its LBC token was an unregistered security offering. [SEC]

Binance US has delisted AMP. But Coinbase still lists AMP and RLY. Gary Gensler has been saying for a while that he thinks nearly all crypto tokens are securities and that Coinbase should register with the SEC.

Coinbase posts another loss

Coinbase’s Q4 earnings report is out, as part of its 10-K annual report for the year ending December 31, 2022. Trading volumes are down even further, and they’re still losing money. [10-K]

As a public company, Coinbase has to put on a happy face for investors — but they’ve been bleeding money for a year now. Net loss for 2022 was $2.625 billion, per GAAP. The COIN stock price has gone down 70% in the past 12 months.

Coinbase would prefer you to look at non-GAAP “adjusted EBITDA,” which comes out to a loss of only $371.4 million. Their “adjusted EBITDA” excludes stock-based compensation expenses in particular. Yes, we’re sure your numbers look better if you exclude the bit where you have to pay your employees.

Coinbase makes its money from (1) BTC and ETH trading, and (2) their share of the interest on the USDC reserve. Also, the majority of their volume comes from a few large customers. So Coinbase would extremely much like to diversify.

CFO Alesia Haas said in the investor earnings call: “Our fourth quarter net revenue increased 5% quarter-over-quarter to $605 million. This was driven by strong growth in our subscription and services revenue.” She means that Q4 revenue was only up because of interest on USDC. [Coinbase, PDF]

Coinbase wants to list every token going — even as many of the hottest tokens are blitheringly obviously securities under the Howey test. Coinbase has spent the past several years helping their very good venture capital friends such as a16z dump their bags on retail.

Coinbase goes on at length about the amazing ambiguity in what constitutes a security under US law. Who can even know what might be deemed a security tomorrow? It is a mystery.

Sure, the Howey test is simple and broad, and sure the SEC has won every case it’s ever brought where it claimed a given crypto was a security. But do you feel lucky?

The 10-K even includes a list of tokens Coinbase trades that the SEC has already said are securities! Coinbase questions whether these tokens are really securities, and confidently asserts that “Despite the SEC being the principal federal securities law regulator in the United States, whether or not an asset is a security under federal securities laws is ultimately determined by a federal court.”

This is true. But it’s also true that the SEC has won every single time. And the consent orders in these cases — because almost nobody was stupid enough to take their case to trial — note that the tokens in question were always offerings of securities. It wasn’t a court finding that made the token a security.

But Coinbase is desperate to diversify and makes it clear that they really want to risk their backsides on this business line of maybe-securities that don’t even make them a lot of money.

The SEC shut down Coinbase’s Earn staking product in 2022 before it could be launched. Haas explained in the analyst call why Coinbase thinks its staking product isn’t a security: “we are passing on rewards directly from the protocol. We are not establishing an APY, we are not establishing the reward rate. That is established at the protocol level. And then we are passing that through and collecting a fixed commission on that amount.” We guess we’ll see if the SEC concurs. [Coinbase, PDF]

Coinbase literally lists Satoshi Nakamoto as a risk factor for its business:

“the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins”

The FTX fallout continues

FTX Japan K.K. users are getting back 100% of their cryptos. Users in other jurisdictions are likely to get cents on the dollar, if that. This is because the US crypto lobby viciously fought any sensible regulation for years — but Japan locked crypto down hard after Mt. Gox exploded in 2014. Taste the freedom! [Bloomberg]

Galois Capital, a real-money hedge fund that thought they’d get into some crypto, shuts its doors after losing $40 million, half its assets, in the collapse of FTX. Whoops! [Twitter, FT, archive]

The Bank for International Settlements — the central bank for central banks — reports that the fall of FTX didn’t have much impact on the rest of the financial world: [BIS bulletin, PDF, Coindesk] 

“Nevertheless, despite crypto’s large user base and the substantial losses to many investors, the market turmoil in 2022 had little discernible impact on broader financial conditions outside the crypto universe, underlining the largely self-referential nature of crypto as an asset class.”

Regulatory clarity

Caitlin Long’s Custodia Bank was refused an account at the Kansas Fed. Custodia appealed the decision. The Federal Reserve Board has looked at Custodia’s appeal and told them to go away. [Federal Reserve]

We’ve mentioned previously that the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) is introducing new rules for crypto exchange registration in the wake of the collapse of FTX. The new regulations, which will apply in all provinces, have been released:

  • Customer cryptos will need to be segregated into an address per customer.
  • Exchanges cannot pledge or rehypothecate customer cryptos. Margin trading is forbidden.
  • Proprietary tokens — in-house supermarket loyalty card points, in the manner of FTT or BNB — require prior written consent and can’t be counted as an asset in your accounts.
  • No stablecoin dealing without prior written consent.

These apply to any exchange with Canadian customers, including non-Canadian exchanges. [Press release; OSC, PDF]

The Financial Action Task Force, the multi-country advisory group set up to combat money laundering, is not happy that its rules on crypto traceability, such as the travel rule, have not been implemented sufficiently widely. At the FATF Plenary on February 22-24, “delegates further agreed on an action plan to drive timely global implementation of FATF standards relating to virtual assets.” [FATF]

The International Monetary Fund has put out a paper, “Elements of Effective Policies for Crypto Assets,” with guidelines that any country that ever might want to hit up the IMF for a loan would be well advised to follow — “amid the failure of various exchanges and other actors within the crypto ecosystem, as well as the collapse of certain crypto assets. Doing nothing is untenable as crypto assets may continue to evolve despite the current downturn.” [Press release; paper, PDF]

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission is consulting on licensing requirements for crypto exchanges to be allowed to sell to retail customers. Hong Kong wants safe custody of customer cryptos — they’re not demanding third-party custodians, an arms-length subsidiary will be sufficient — KYC, cybersecurity, accounting and auditing, risk management, AML, and prevention of market misconduct. So, the very basic requirements of being a financial institution. Responses should be in by March 31. [SFC; SFC, PDF]

In the US, the SEC got a lot of stick for not going after crypto harder in the bubble. Then it came out that the Blockchain Eight group of representatives had written to Gary Gensler telling him to back off. Now the legislature has demanded action, and Gensler is delivering. Here’s how the Blockchain Eight got the opposite of what they wanted. [The American Prospect]

“Gensler also made clear that he has been grappling with the same question as many of the rest of us: What, exactly, is the point of crypto?” [Intelligencer]

John Naughton on the latest UK Treasury crypto consultation paper. “The second lesson is that permissionless blockchains can never be allowed within the financial services sector.” [Guardian]

Voyager Digital

97% of Voyager creditors have voted for Binance to buy Voyager Digital! We think it’s unlikely that regulators will let the deal go through, and Binance US doesn’t have the money to cover all those liabilities to Voyager customers — but hey, who knows? [CoinDesk]

FTX in Chapter 11 is suing Voyager Digital in Chapter 11 for the return of a loan that Alameda paid back to Voyager just before it went into bankruptcy protection. FTX, Voyager and both companies’ Unsecured Creditors’ Committees have come to a settlement! An ad-hoc group of Voyager creditors objects to the deal. [Doc 1048, PDF; Doc 1084, PDF]

The Voyager UCC has subpoenaed the ex-top brass of FTX for depositions — Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Trabucco, and Daniel Friedberg. The notices to the court don’t detail what the UCC wants to ask — just that they are asking. Voyager’s link to FTX is the huge pile of FTT that the company counted as part of its assets. [e.g., Doc 1018, PDF]

SBF’s lawyers have already moved that the subpoena was deficient because it was handed to Sam’s mom Barbara Fried and not into Sam’s own hands personally. [Doc, PDF]

Celsius Network and your pension

Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec (CDPQ) was the pension fund that invested USD$150 million into equity in Celsius Network. Executive vice-president and CTO Alexandre Synnett, who was the executive involved in the Celsius investment, “left the organization on his own volition about two weeks ago,” said CEO Charles Emond in the 2022 earnings call. CDPQ will not be touching crypto going forward. [BetaKit; The Logic, paywalled]

Other good news for bitcoin

Bitcoin miners are diversifying because mining is sucking as a business. Riot Blockchain has changed its name to Riot Platforms. [Coindesk]

Crypto firm Phoenix Community Capital and its founder Luke Sullivan, with links to various UK parliamentary groups, appears to have vanished. Some of the firm’s assets and its name appear to have been sold to a new company run by an individual called “Dan,” who has told investors it has no obligation towards them. [Guardian]

Data Finnovation, who took out BUSD, now looks into weird bridging on Tether. [Medium] 

Image: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is being patted down with a makeup sponge as a big green screen looms behind him. Fortune

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Crypto collapse: FTX family subpoenas, SBF witness tampering, Celsius bids revealed, more crypto banking woes

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

FTX: It’s a family affair

FTX’s lawyers have questions. Specifically, they have questions for Sam Bankman-Fried’s brother Gabriel and his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried.

Joseph advised FTX. He recruited its first lawyers and joined FTX staff in meetings on Capitol Hill. When visiting the FTX offices in the Bahamas, he and Barbara stayed in a $16.4 million house with its title in their names. Barbara founded a political action committee called Mind the Gap, which received donations from FTX.

Gabriel launched Guarding Against Pandemics, an organization funded by Sam. Gabriel purchased a multimillion-dollar property in Washington D.C., which John Jay Ray III’s current FTX team believe was purchased using FTX customer funds.

Every member of Sam’s family had some involvement in FTX — and they aren’t responding to requests for documents. So Ray’s team and the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee (UCC) want to subpoena Joseph, Barbara and Gabriel under rule 2004. [Doc 579, PDF; Bloomberg]

We’ve detailed rule 2004 previously. Federal Rule of Bankruptcy 2004 allows tremendously broad discovery and deposition. A witness is not always entitled to attorney representation or cross-examination and has only a limited right to object to questions. 2004 exams are sometimes referred to as “fishing expeditions” — because they need to be.

Included in the same 2004 motion, Ray is also asking the court’s permission to subpoena Sam and several other FTX insiders, including FTX cofounders Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, and former FTX COO Constance Wang. Along with SBF’s family, they have not been very responsive:

“Mr. Wang and Ms. Ellison expressly declined to provide the requested information, and Ms. Fried has ignored the Requests altogether. The Debtors have not received meaningful engagement or any response from Mr. Singh or Mr. Gabriel Bankman-Fried.”

Ray’s team are investigating the FTX hack on November 11-12, which saw $300 million in crypto siphoned off the exchange while crypto Twitter watched in horror. They’ve requested an order pursuant to Rule 2004 here too — under seal, because the information in the motion could “reveal or lead to evidence that will reveal the identity and activities of the perpetrator(s).” It sounds like they already have a very good idea who was behind the hack. [Doc 581, PDF]  

A mostly-unredacted list of FTX creditors is now available. It includes investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan; media companies, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal; commercial airliners, including American, United, Southwest, and Spirit; as well as several large tech players, including Netflix, Apple, and Meta. Individual customers’ names remain withheld. [Doc 574, PDF] 

FTX objects to the US Trustee’s request to appoint an independent examiner. They argue an examiner would duplicate work that’s already underway by FTX, the UCC, law enforcement, and regulators. “Indeed, if history is a guide, the cost could near or exceed $100 million.” They point out that “it is difficult to imagine an examiner candidate whose qualifications exceed those of Mr. Ray.” Which is a good point. The UCC concurs. [Doc 573, PDF; Doc 571, PDF]

What’s a little witness tampering between friends?

SBF is playing fast and loose with potential witnesses in his criminal trial. He contacted “Witness-1,” the “current General Counsel of FTX US” (Ryne Miller) to work out a story with. We doubt Miller would want anything to do with such a scheme. But this was enough for the government to ask Judge Lewis Kaplan to modify Sam’s bail: [DOJ letter to judge, PDF]

“Specifically, the Government respectfully requests that the Court impose the following conditions: (1) the defendant shall not contact or communicate with current or former employees of FTX or Alameda (other than immediate family members) except in the presence of counsel, unless the Government or Court exempts an individual from this no-contact rule; and (2) the defendant shall not use any encrypted or ephemeral call or messaging application, including but not limited to Signal.”

SBF’s lawyers responded by pounding the table. Judge Kaplan has told both sides to chill. The government should get its reply in, with substantiation of its claims, by February 2. [letter, PDF; order, PDF]

Dirty Bubble has found another link between FTX and the fraud-riddled binary options industry. In September 2021, FTX purchased the ZUBR derivatives exchange for $11 million. The exchange was registered in Gibraltar. By the time Gibraltar rescinded ZUBR’s license, the exchange had no active customers. The exchange was a collaboration between Belarusian binary options and crypto “billionaire” Viktor Prokopenya and his former business partner Said Gutseriev, the son of one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs. [Dirty Bubble]  

(Update, March 15, 2023: Viktor Prokopenya tells us he “never had any commercial interest or other involvement in ZUBR.” Dirty Bubble has updated his story to note that FTX purchased ZUBR directly from Prokopenya’s business partner Said Gutseriev. Dirty also notes interesting connections between ZUBR and Prokopenya’s other entities in his story.) 

Would it surprise you to learn that FTX made political donations to George Santos? [SFGate]

Celsius Network: Let’s make more magic beans!

Celsius has rejected the Binance US bid for Celsius assets, and four other bids. In the January 23 hearing, Ross Kwasteniet of Kirkland & Ellis, speaking for Celsius, said the bids “have not been compelling.”

Instead, Celsius have concocted a plan to reorganize into a publicly traded company and issue a new “Asset Share Token” to creditors. Those following the Celsius disaster will recognise this as Alex Mashinsky’s very dumb and bad Kelvin Plan from September 2022.

Creditors weren’t told about the other bids. As it happened, Tiffany Fong — Celsius creditor and YouTuber — got all the bids in a leak in December. Bidders included Binance US, Bank To The Future (Simon Dixon), Galaxy Digital, Cumberland DRW, and NovaWulf. Fong posted full text of the leaked bids. [Substack; Youtube] 

  • Binance US: buy just the crypto, assume liabilities (with a haircut); excludes FTT, CEL, and other illiquid trash tokens. Pay $15 million cash.
  • Bank to the Future: crypto returned to customers pro rata. Other Celsius assets to special-purpose vehicles, customers get an ownership share. Cash to be raised through rights offering to creditors.
  • Galaxy Digital: Acquire illiquid assets and staked ETH. Pay $66.8 million cash.
  • Cumberland DRW: Purchase certain tokens and portfolio of alternative investments, excluding CEL. $1.8 billion total payment, includes various haircuts.
  • NovaWulf: Transfer substantially all assets and businesses to SEC-compliant NewCo, 100% owned by the creditors. Issue revenue share tokens. NovaWulf to pay $60-120 million, mostly in tokens. This is also a version of the Kelvin plan.

Many ad hoc creditors were disappointed that the Binance bid was rejected — but it shouldn’t be surprising, given the issues that Binance is already having with its bid for Voyager.

Frankly, we don’t think the other bids look all that great either — they’re fanciful coiner dreams that first assume the crypto market is healthy, which it isn’t.

We think Celsius should have just liquidated in July rather than taking several months and handing millions of dollars to bankruptcy professionals to get to the same place.

Banks

Silvergate is short on cash, so it’s suspended dividend payments on its preferred stock. [Business Wire] 

The stock in question (NYSE:SI) is going down the toilet. It’s crashed from $220 in November 2021 to below $14 in January 2023. Signature Bank (NASDAQ: SBNY) has gone from $365 to $127 over the past year.

Moonstone Bank says that “recent events” — FTX tried to use them as a financial laundromat — and “the changing regulatory environment around crypto businesses” — the regulators are on the warpath — have prompted it to ditch the “innovation-driven business model” it adopted in recent years. [WSJ, paywall] 

Federal bank regulators are not keen on dodgy crypto banks authorized by captured Wyoming state regulators. Custodia Bank can’t get a Fed account: [Federal Reserve]

“The Board has concluded that the firm’s application as submitted is inconsistent with the required factors under the law. Custodia is a special purpose depository institution, chartered by the state of Wyoming, which does not have federal deposit insurance. The firm proposed to engage in novel and untested crypto activities that include issuing a crypto asset on open, public and/or decentralized networks.”

Crypto.com’s old gateway for GBP and EUR was Transactive Systems of Lithuania. Transactive has been cut off by the Bank of Lithuania, after it found “significant violations and shortcomings of the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.” Transactive had apparently been giving accounts to a long list of low-quality institutions in low-quality jurisdictions. Transactive can no longer serve financial institutions, forex, or crypto clients. They also got cut off from the UK Faster Payments system. Your EUR and GBP sent to Crypto.com via Transactive are probably now stuck. [Twitter; Offshore CorpTalk; Bank of Lithuania, in Lithuanian]  

Before Crypto.com got kicked off Silvergate, it used to get US dollar deposits via an oddly roundabout method: customers would send USD to Circle’s account at Silvergate, and Circle would mint that much USDC and send the USDC to Crypto.com. It is possible this was not in full compliance with KYC and AML regulations. [Twitter; crypto.com, archive]

Other happy little accidents

London-based crypto exchange Luno, a subsidiary of DCG, is laying off 35% of its staff. About 330 employees will be let go from the firm, which has offices in Africa, Asia, and Europe. [WSJ, paywall; archive] 

DeFi volumes are right down. The amount of money (or “money”) involved has been flat for months, and — most importantly — you can’t get the ridiculous yields you could in the bubble. Oh no! Anyway. [Bloomberg]

Happy Penis Day, to those who celebrate

It was five years ago today, January 28, 2018, that the Prodeum initial coin offering took everyone’s money and disappeared, leaving behind only a new jargon term for “exit scam” or “rugpull.” You get a penis! And you get a penis! And you get a penis! Everybody gets a penis! [The Next Web, 2018]

Image: Sam Bankman-Sopranino and family.

Posted on by Amy Castor 2

Crypto collapse: Genesis bankrupt, CoinDesk for sale, Bankman-Fried attacks FTX lawyers, Bitzlato busted

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

I think we made some tremendous progress in the six months before I left.

— Jeffrey Skilling, Enron

Media stardom

Amy’s first piece for Foreign Policy is out now! “The Crypto Dominoes Are Still Falling: The bankruptcy of Genesis shows the need for regulators to have teeth.” She advises that regulators be given the power to act much more quickly against obvious nonsense. [Foreign Policy, paywalled]

Genesis goes down — DCG is fine, fine

The lending arm of Genesis finally filed for chapter 11 in the Southern District of New York on January 19. This has been expected for months, as they froze withdrawals in November. [Amended Petition, PDF; docket on Kroll; press release; Bloomberg; Michael Lito declaration, PDF]

The corporate entities that filed were Global Holdco and its lending subsidiaries Genesis Global Capital and Genesis Asia Pacific, which managed Genesis lending for Three Arrows Capital. Genesis’ derivatives, spot trading, broker-dealer, and custody businesses were not part of the bankruptcy.

Genesis owes its top 50 creditors — mostly unnamed on the petition — over $3.4 billion. Gemini Earn clients are collectively owed $765.9 million. Other big claims include a $78 million loan payable from Donut (a “high-yield” DeFi platform — “high yield” is a euphemism for “Ponzi”) and a VanEck fund with a $53.1 million loan payable. [Reuters]

But fear not! Genesis has a plan to exit the bankruptcy by May 19. It will try to sell its assets at auction within three months. [Chapter 11 Plan, PDF]

The settlement proposal is written in a confusing and opaque manner — but DCG controls the bankrupt entities utterly. DCG is trying to declare its left hand solvent and its right hand bankrupt, and stick the creditors with the losses.

Page 50 of the chapter 11 plan (page 54 of the PDF) sets out the street corner shell game. Claims are shuffled between the bankrupt Genesis entities and the non-bankrupt DCG entities such that heads DCG wins, and tails the creditors lose. Any Gemini Earn creditor who accepts this settlement relinquishes all claims against DCG, Gemini, and the Winklevoss twins personally.

We think DCG screwed up by covering for Genesis in July 2022, when it took on the claim to 3AC and issued Genesis a $1.1 billion promissory note in return. It’s clear that nobody at Genesis could refuse the offer — that this was entirely in the control of DCG. Also, the 3AC loan was secured in part by shares of GBTC, as issued by DCG’s Grayscale. Genesis should have declared bankruptcy then.

In addition to the $1.1 billion note, DCG owes Genesis another $575 million, in cash and cryptos. The Genesis bankruptcy is all about shielding DCG from liability.

“This SHOULD be criminal,” Nicholas Weaver said. “You sell a billion dollars worth of unregistered investments (it is called ‘securities fraud’), they go sour, your victims should be able to go after you. But this is all designed to basically be a perfect crime: a billion dollar theft, in plain sight, and with legal protection.” He advises the unsecured creditors’ committee to reject the offer. [Mastodon]

Gemini Earn claims against Genesis are part of the bankruptcy. It’s unlikely the customers will get all their money back in chapter 11. The question is: will Gemini make Earn depositors whole, or will the Winklevosses argue that Earn depositors are creditors of Genesis?

Cameron Winklevoss is still fighting to get Genesis to pay up. He threatened to sue DCG over the bankruptcy: “Unless Barry and DCG come to their senses and make a fair offer to creditors, we will be filing a lawsuit against Barry and DCG imminently.” [Twitter]

As we noted previously, the SEC case against Gemini Earn makes Gemini and Genesis jointly and severally liable to pay back customers in full, should the SEC win or the defendants settle. And Gemini has the funds and isn’t bankrupt. So Cameron really wants DCG to pay.

Who wants to buy CoinDesk?

DCG’s crypto news site CoinDesk is exploring a partial or full sale. CEO Kevin Worth says that CoinDesk has received multiple unsolicited offers of over $200 million. We raised an eyebrow at this claim, but hey. We doubt the offers were in actual cash dollars, though. [WSJ] 

CoinDesk claims it received $50 million in revenue in 2022. It’s unclear where from. Its main income source was events — which are not so huge in the crypto winter. There are a few ads on the site. Staff expansions in the past year, particularly at CoinDesk TV, won’t have been cheap.

CoinDesk has been propped up by DCG since 2016 when Barry Silbert bought the site for $500,000. We understand that CoinDesk was about to go broke when Silbert dived in and rescued it. CoinDesk was still a small crypto blog then, but Silbert took it into the big time just in time for the 2017 bubble.

CoinDesk’s job is to be a PR machine for Silbert’s empire — often quite explicitly. [CoinDesk memo, archive] The only reason to buy CoinDesk would be to make it your PR machine.

3AC and CoinFLEX — a remarkable team

Three Arrows Capital founders Zhu Su and Kyle Davies are looking to raise $25 million for a new crypto claims exchange. That is, an exchange for claims against bankrupt crypto companies. 3AC are, of course, experts in going bankrupt in a really big way.

Zhu and Davies were going to name their new thing GTX — a take on FTX because G comes after F. They claimed this was just a temporary name after everyone made fun of them.

The pair are working alongside CoinFLEX founders Mark Lamb and Sudhu Arumugam. CoinFLEX filed for restructuring in the Seychelles in June after it suffered $84 million in losses from a large individual customer — Roger Ver. 

GTX will run on CoinFLEX’s software and a legal team will oversee the onboarding of claims for all the recent crypto bankruptcies —including Celsius, Voyager, FTX, and Mt. Gox. Creditors who transfer their claims to GTX will receive credit in a token called USDG. [The Block]  

In its pitch deck, GTX estimated there was a $20 billion market for crypto claims, based on the notional value of those claims. “We can dominate the crypto claims market within 2-3 months of go-live.” [WSJ, paywalled; FT, paywalled; pitch deck, archive, PDF]

The pitch deck ends with a splash detailing 3AC and CoinFLEX’s extensive crypto market successes. This fails to mention that both companies went broke — and that 3AC went broke so hard they took out much of crypto all by themselves.

GTX gets full points for audacity, and here’s to Zhu and Davies going to jail.

FTX: Judge says Sullivan & Cromwell can stay

Amy and Molly White live-tweeted the FTX hearing on Friday, January 20. It was about FTX’s applications to retain various bankruptcy professionals, mainly Sullivan & Cromwell. [Twitter; Twitter, Agenda, PDF]

Judge John Dorsey ruled FTX could continue using Sullivan & Cromwell, despite claims the law firm was too conflicted. [Order, PDF; Motion, PDF]

The US Trustee and the UCC had originally objected to S&C on the grounds the firm failed to make relevant disclosures regarding its prior dealings with FTX. But leading up to the hearing, the parties worked things out, and now the UST and UCC are on board. The only remaining objections came from FTX creditor Warren Winter, with a joinder from FTX creditor Richard Brummond. [Objection, PDF; Joinder, PDF]

In support of Winter’s objection, former FTX (and Ultimate Poker!) lawyer Daniel Friedberg filed a hilariously terrible declaration. Friedberg describes how shocked he was to learn that $8 billion of FTX customer money was missing. After reviewing his “ethical obligations” — a bodily organ hitherto unknown to Mr. Friedberg — he resigned. He tries to imply that S&C took FTX into bankruptcy so they could loot the corpse, helped from the inside by S&C’s former law partner, Ryne Miller. [Declaration, PDF]

Because Friedman filed his declaration late, White followed with an emergency motion to adjourn the hearing, so the court would have more time to chew on it. [Motion, PDF]

S&C’s James Bromely said Sam Bankman-Fried was behind all of this troublemaking. Friedberg’s declaration came hot on the heels of social media posts by SBF attacking the law firm. SBF is living in his parent’s home with an ankle bracelet and Friedberg has been questioned by the FBI. The pair were part of the inner circle that brought down FTX, said Bromely:

“If you are Mr. Bankman Fried or Mr. Friedberg, there is a concern about what is going on and what could happen to them. They can’t throw stones at the US attorney’s office. But they can throw stones at the Debtor’s counsel who are providing information to the prosecutors and the regulators, which is exactly what is happening.” 

As far as Friedberg goes, Bromely added: “He’s got a checkered past. It takes a lot of guts for him to put something in writing that says, ‘I was the chief compliance officer at FTX.’”  

Judge Dorsey dismissed everything in the Friedberg declaration saying, “It’s full of hearsay, innuendo, speculation, and rumor… certainly not something I would allow to be introduced into evidence in any event.”

FTX CEO John Jay Ray III said in his declaration S&C are not the villains. The villains are being pursued by criminal authorities. [Ray declaration, PDF]

We concur that S&C may be conflicted. But they’re competent to do the job, they’ve already spent 70 days on the case, which new counsel would have to do over, and it’s not like someone else would be cheaper.

The Trustee also wants to appoint an examiner in the case. The examiner motion will be heard on February 6. 

FTX: mycrimes.blog

A new mycrimes.blog just dropped, with more drafts from Sam’s forthcoming book* If Caroline and CZ and John Ray and Sullivan & Cromwell Did It. SBF claims that FTX US was solvent when he passed it off to the lawyers, Sullivan & Cromwell. John Jay Ray III responds: “This is the problem, he thinks everything is one big honey pot.” [Substack; WSJ]  

FTX secretly channeled a $50 million loan to Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, in a deal struck with Deltec chair Jean Chalopin. “Deltec is emerging as a central figure in the scrum of lawyers, banks and unwitting associates FTX pulled into its orbit.” Our regular readers will recognize Deltec as the known banker for Tether, who have occasionally claimed to hold more dollars for Tether than are documented in the entire Bahamas banking system. [Forbes, paywall]

It was obvious to executives and software developers at FTX that financial arrangements between FTX and Alameda were somewhat odd as early as 2020. FTX employees have been leaking documents to the New York Times. [NYT]

CFTC commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero gave a speech on FTX’s failure and the nature of public trust in crypto firms. She goes in hard, particularly after the professional gatekeepers: “lawyers, accountants, auditors, compliance professionals and other gatekeepers for crypto firms failed customers in their essential duties.” Venture capitalists and pension funds too. She wants Congress to give the CFTC more power over crypto exchanges. [CFTC]

Romero also went after FTX’s venture capital backers on Bloomberg TV: “What kind of due diligence did they conduct? Why did they turn a blind eye to what should have been really flashing red lights?” [Bloomberg]

* c’mon, you know he will

Bitzlato: Ladies and gentlemen, we got ’em

Everyone heard about the huge Fed announcement of an international cryptocurrency bust and went … who the hell is Bitzlato? Some tiny Hong Kong exchange run by some Russian living in Shenzhen? [Press release; order, PDF; affidavit, PDF]

Bitzlato, formerly called ChangeBot, was a small exchange with a peer-to-peer service, similar to LocalBitcoins. Its user base was Russian crooks doing crooked things with fake accounts. Users with valid Know-Your-Customer info would create “drop” accounts which they would then sell to crooks. So Bitzlato could say it had KYC, even if it didn’t do anything.

Bitzlato was not systemic to the crypto economy. But it was important to the Russia-based ransomware economy, and it was the exchange of choice for users of the Hydra darknet market that was busted in April 2022.

The Feds basically enacted Nicholas Weaver and Bruce Schneier’s 2021 plan to take out ransomware: hit the very few exchanges willing to touch such tainted coins. [Slate, 2021]

The fun part of the FBI affidavit is the tales of Bitzlato’s criminal customer service, page 10 onwards:

•‌ On or about December 27, 2017, a user with the username “Dude Weed” wrote to Bitzlato’s customer service portal, stating: “I have a bitcoin wallet in my account on the Hydra site. I also have a wallet here … How do I recharge a Hydra wallet”? The user also provided transaction details. Based on my training and experience, this query reflects the user’s desire to send funds from Bitzlato to Hydra. A Bitzlato representative responded: “Hello dude weed,” apologized for the delay in the transaction, and stated that “The transaction successfully went online.” The Bitzlato representative provided a link to an online blockchain explorer, reflecting a completed Bitcoin transaction whose total amount was then equivalent to approximately $14,600.

•‌ On December 17, 2020, a Bitzlato representative asked a user to provide his identity documents. The user protested, writing, “I don’t quite understand why you need a photo of this card? It’s not mine[.]” In further conversations, the user clarified that “everyone on the site trades with other people’s cards … they often discuss so-called ‘drops.’” The user commented that he had been told to create an account using credentials supplied by an online cryptocurrency training course that he had found on Instagram. The Bitzlato representative asked the user to provide his true identity documents and, rather than terminate that user, said the user could keep trading on Bitzlato.

Image: Cameron Winklevoss on Instagram

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

Crypto collapse: DCG’s problem is Grayscale, FTX Bahamas agreement, DeFi trading arrest, Silvergate Bank, Huobi, Binance

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!

— Sir Walter Scott, 1808

DCG: Congratulations, you played yourself

The Department of Justice’s Eastern District of New York and the SEC are looking into money flows between Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group and its lending subsidiary Genesis, and what investors were told about the transfers. [Bloomberg]

DCG has been playing all the same games as the rest of crypto — trying to create the illusion of money where there is no money, to keep the party going a little bit longer.

Genesis should have declared insolvency in June when Three Arrows Capital (3AC) blew a $2.4 billion hole in its accounts — but DCG purchased 3AC’s defaulted loan from Genesis and financed the purchase with a promissory note of $1.1 billion, to be paid back over 10 years.

That is: DCG and Genesis counted an internal IOU as money, to claim Genesis was still solvent.

The catch with the promissory note is that if the 10-year loan is “callable” — meaning DCG would have to pay Genesis the full amount immediately in the event of a liquidation or bankruptcy — then it could give Genesis creditors a claim on DCG itself, and take all of DCG down with it.

“The Promissory Note is like a noose wrapped tight around the neck of DCG. If Genesis goes over the cliff, it drags DCG with it,” said Ram Ahluwalia, the co-founder of Lumida, an investment advisory firm that focuses on crypto. [Twitter]

In a letter to shareholders in November, Silbert disclosed that DCG borrowed another $575 million from Genesis — due in May 2023. The funds were used for “investment opportunities” and buying back shares of DCG stock from outside investors. [Twitter]

A creditor committee that includes crypto exchange Gemini presented Genesis and DCG with a plan to recover the assets. Silbert had until January 8 to respond. Cameron Winklevoss threatened that “time is running out.” [Twitter; Twitter]

We think Gemini will try to force Genesis into involuntary chapter 11 — they just need three creditors to file a petition with the bankruptcy court. The judge then holds a hearing and decides if the matter will go through. [11 U.S. Code, section 303]

Gemini Earn, Genesis, GBTC, and 3AC

As is usual in crypto, DCG screwed itself by greed. DCG also owns Grayscale, which operates the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) — DCG’s cash cow. Grayscale collects a whopping 2% annual fee on its assets under management — currently, 633,000 BTC.

GBTC traded above the face value of the bitcoins in the fund up to early 2021 — then it dropped below net asset value (NAV).

Genesis took the crypto it got from Gemini Earn customers and lent those funds out to institutional investors and crypto hedge funds — such as Three Arrows Capital.

3AC was one of the biggest investors in GBTC, taking advantage of a lucrative arbitrage opportunity. They would borrow bitcoins from Genesis and swap those for GBTC shares at NAV from Grayscale. After a six-month lockup, 3AC could dump the shares on retail for a handsome profit. Rinse and repeat, and when GBTC was trading at 20% above NAV, they could make a 40% profit a year that way

This GBTC arb played a big role in keeping the price of bitcoin above water in 2020, setting the stage for the 2021 bitcoin bubble.

At the end of 2020, 3AC was the largest holder of GBTC with a position worth $1 billion at the time. After February 2021, the GBTC premium dried up, and GBTC began trading on secondary markets at a steep discount to NAV. 

3AC had hoped the discount would be reversed when the SEC approved Grayscale converting its bitcoin trust to an ETF. But the SEC rejected the application, and the GBTC discount continued to widen. [Bloomberg]

When 3AC defaulted on its $2.4 billion loan to Genesis, Genesis seized the collateral backing the loan, including 17.4 million shares of GBTC, and filed a $1.1 billion claim against 3AC — a claim that is now on DCG’s books. [Coindesk; Affidavit Russell Crumpler, PDF]

Class action against Gemini Earn

Gemini partnered with Genesis for their Earn program. After Genesis lost $175 million in FTX in November, it froze withdrawals. Gemini Earn froze withdrawals in turn. Now Gemini Earn customers are out $900 million.

In an effort to get those funds back, three Gemini Earn customers are seeking class arbitration against Genesis and DCG.  

Gemini and Genesis had a “master digital asset loan agreement,” which Gemini Earn customers entered into — when you became an Earn customer, you agreed you were lending money to Genesis.

The complaint alleges that Genesis breached this agreement by hiding its insolvency through a “sham transaction,” whereby DCG “bought” the right to collect a $2.3 billion debt owed to Genesis by 3AC with the aforementioned $1.1 billion promissory note. The plaintiffs also claim that the Genesis loan agreement created an unregistered sale of securities. [Press release; Complaint, PDF; Master Digital Asset Loan Agreement]

The master loan agreement states that: “Each Party represents and warrants that it is not insolvent and is not subject to any bankruptcy or insolvency proceedings under any applicable laws.”

This is why Silbert keeps insisting that Genesis has a liquidity issue and not a solvency issue — even as those are functionally identical in crypto. If Genesis was found to be insolvent and took customer funds in, it would be in violation of that contract. (As well as promptly calling that promissory note from DCG.)

Amidst all of this, Larry Summers, the former US Treasury Secretary and World Bank Chief Economist, has quietly left DCG — going so far as to remove all mention of DCG from his own website. Summers joined DCG as a senior advisor in 2016, a year after the company’s founding. [Protos]

Silvergate Bank

Moody’s has downgraded Silvergate Bank’s long-term deposit rating to Ba1 from Baa2 after the crypto bank announced that its customers — who are almost entirely crypto firms now — withdrew $8 billion in deposits in Q4 2022: [Moody’s] 

The negative outlook reflects Moody’s view that the bank’s profitability over the near term will be weak along with the risk of further declines in deposits from crypto currency centric firms further pressuring profitability. In addition, the negative outlook reflects the increasing regulatory and legal risks that the firm is currently facing.

Silvergate’s other customers are worried about the bank’s solvency and about the regulatory heat coming its way. Silvergate was key to FTX/Alameda having access to actual money — they helped funnel money to FTX from accounts in the name of Alameda and of Alameda’s dubious subsidiary, North Dimensions. 

If Silvergate are found to be complicit in FTX’s fraud, they will be fined. But if there was money laundering and sanctions busting, they could be shut down. They will at the very least be fined. We would guess some individuals will also get a bar from being bankers. Here’s a list of enforcement actions on Federal Reserve member banks. [Federal Reserve]

Silvergate’s 8-K SEC filings this year are full of bad news. We noted Silvergate’s layoffs and writing off its Diem investment last time. [SEC 8-K; SEC 8-K; SEC 10-Q]

FTX

After a series of knock-down-drag-out filings — and the hilarious revelations of how FTX Digital Markets (FTX DM) was functionally Sam Bankman-Fried’s Bahamas partying fund — the US and Bahamas bankruptcies are working together now. John Jay Ray III and his team met in Miami with the joint provisional liquidators (JPLs) handling the FTX DM liquidation, and they’ve reached an agreement. [press release; agreement, PDF]

The Bahamas JPLs will handle everything to do with FTX DM, and the US administrators will handle everything to do with all the other FTX companies. The JPLs will handle the Bahamas real estate and the cryptos being held by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas. (This doesn’t mean that the Bahamas will handle the disbursement of the crypto they have under their control — only that FTX is fine with them holding the funds for now.) The parties will share information. FTX DM’s chapter 15 foreign entity bankruptcy in the SDNY will continue.

We suspect it was clear the US side would win in court, and the Bahamas liquidators realized they weren’t being paid enough to damage their reputations this way. The agreement is subject to approval by the courts in the US and the Bahamas, but it would be surprising for them not to allow it.

The Department of Justice has put out a call for victims of “Samuel Bankman-Fried, a/k/a ‘SBF.’” That’s his rapper name now. [Justice]  

Huobi’s real-time meltdown

Huobi has always been a dodgy crypto exchange — even before it was run by Justin Sun from Tron. Huobi has $2.6 billion in reserves, and 40% of that is its own HT token. If you don’t count its own internal supermarket loyalty card points, Huobi is insolvent. [Twitter]

Huobi is desperately searching its pockets for spare change. On December 30, Wu Blockchain reported that Huobi was canceling year-end bonuses and planning to slash half its staff of 1,200 people and cut the salaries of senior employees. Sun denied the rumors. [Twitter; South China Morning Post; Twitter] 

Other unofficial reports from small accounts on Twitter said that Huobi was offering to pay its employees in stablecoins — USDC and tethers — instead of actual-money yuan. If they objected, they would lose their jobs. [Twitter] 

Employees revolted at being paid in magic beans — so Sun cut off internal communications. On January 4, Bitrun said that “all communication and feedback channels with employees” had been blocked. [Twitter] 

Here’s the unofficial details on how Huobi is treating its employees. Those who quit because they’re getting paid in tethers get no severance pay either. This is what a doomed company does. [Twitter]  

After initially denying Huobi was cutting staff, Sun finally admitted that Huobi was indeed laying off 20% of its employees in the first quarter of 2023 — after rumors swirled that half of all employees would be let go. [FT]

Huobi users rushed to get their funds off of the exchange. Blockchain analytics platform Nansen noted a wave of withdrawals on January 5 and 6. Following the withdrawals, Peckshield reported a wallet associated with Tron moved $100 million in stablecoins — USDC and tethers — into Huobi. [Twitter, Twitter]

In a lengthy Twitter thread, Sun assures you that your funds are totally safe. We fully expect the exchange to blow up at any moment. [Twitter]

Binance

US prosecutors for the Western District of Washington in Seattle are sending subpoenas to hedge funds for records of their dealings with Binance. John Ghose, formerly a Justice Department prosecutor who specialized in crypto and now a lawyer at compliance vendor VeraSafe, thinks this is about money laundering. [Washington Post]

We noted previously that “BUSD” on Binance is not the BUSD issued by Paxos, which claims to be backed by actual dollars in Silvergate Bank. Binance “BUSD” is a stablecoin-of-a stablecoin, maintained internally. This is the sort of arrangement that’s fine until it isn’t.

It turns out that Binance has been issuing uncollateralised “BUSD” on its own BNB blockchain. Data Finnovation looked at the Ethereum and BNB blockchains and saw that Binance has a history of minting fake “BUSD” internally on BNB. At some points in 2021, there were $500 million to $1 billion of fake dollars circulating on BNB. They’re caught up now, though — so that’s all fine, right? [Medium]

Dirty Bubble thinks Binance US isn’t meaningfully separate from Binance.com, if you look at how the cryptos flow. But that shouldn’t be news to anyone here. [Dirty Bubble]

Reuters is still on the Binance beat. Here’s a special report on Binance’s accounts, as far as can be told. Reuters calls Binance’s books a “black box.” Private companies don’t have to disclose their financials, especially if they’re operating outside all effective regulation — but even Binance’s former CFO, Wei Zhou, didn’t have full access to the company’s accounting records in the three years he was there. We’ve noted previously how regulators have a heck of a time getting the most basic information out of Binance. [Reuters] 

John Hyatt from Forbes notes how Binance is spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars sponsoring Politico’s Playbook newsletter to reach politicians and bureaucrats. Worked great for FTX! [Twitter thread]

DeFi: Go directly to jail

Discussions of crime on the blockchain hardly ever point out that almost all of what goes on in DeFi was always just straight-up illegal under US law.

Pretty much every token was always an unregistered security. The sort of market manipulations that are standard practice in the DeFi trash fire have been illegal under Dodd-Frank since 2010. And that’s before we get to the rugpulls, hacks, and “hacks.”

The authorities are finally moving in. Every DeFi trader should consider themselves on notice.

Hotshot DeFi trader Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg was arrested in Puerto Rico on December 27 on a Department of Justice (Southern District of New York) indictment for commodities fraud and commodities manipulation in the $110 million trade that took out Mango Markets. [indictment, PDF; case docket]

Mango Markets is a decentralized exchange that runs on Solana. Users can lend, borrow, swap, and trade on margin. The exchange is overseen by a DAO, made up of people who hold MNGO — the native token of the exchange.

On October 11, someone drained the project of $110 million by manipulating the platform’s price oracle. After others had traced it to him, Avi Eisenberg came forward and explained the trade.

Eisenberg sold MNGO perpetual futures from one account he controlled to another account also under his control. He then bought large amounts of MNGO, which had the effect of increasing the value of his large holding of MNGO perpetuals. He then borrowed against these holdings and withdrew $110 million in assorted cryptocurrencies. 

This also rendered the Mango platform insolvent. Eisenberg himself explained that the insurance fund in place was “insufficient to cover all liquidations.” He gave back some of his trading profits. [Twitter; Bloomberg]

Eisenberg tweeted: [Twitter, archive]

I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed, even if the development team did not fully anticipate all the consequences of setting parameters the way they are.

Eisenberg’s lawyer will likely explain his client’s erroneous legal reasoning to him.

Eisenberg wasn’t just arrested, he was denied bail as a flight risk — he has significant ties outside the US, he already left the US for two months just after the alleged offense, he likely has crypto stashed away somewhere, the charge carries a heavy penalty, and his background could not be checked. (Compare Sam Bankman-Fried’s release on bail.) [Order of detention pending trial, PDF]

It’s not clear why prosecutors went after Eisenberg in particular. We’d guess the CFTC and DoJ were looking for someone to make an example of. The bit where Eisenberg tweeted a complete confession probably helped, much as SBF’s confession tour of the press helped get him indicted.

What Eisenberg did to Mango was not remarkable at all. DeFi traders pull this nonsense all the time. Perhaps you don’t think DeFi trading shenanigans should be crimes, and that’s nice for you that you think that.

As Avi tweeted on October 19: “What are you gonna do, arrest me?” [Twitter, archive]

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

FTX Bahamas vs. John Jay Ray, Bankman-Fried pleads not guilty, DoJ seizes FTX assets

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

i wonder how many times someone’s managed to hack in to a bitcoin exchange and found there wasn’t any money there and just left

— Boxturret, SomethingAwful

FTX vs the Bahamas

There’s a turf war going on between the FTX Digital Markets (FTX DM) liquidation in the Bahamas and the FTX Trading Ltd bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. We wrote about it earlier, along with some of the fishy stuff going on in the Bahamas.  

The Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) filed their liquidation for FTX DM, a small subsidiary of FTX Trading, just one day before John Jay Ray III filed for Chapter 11 on behalf of FTX. Sam Bankman-Fried helped the SCB get in before Ray by waiting until the wee hours of November 11 to hand control over to Ray. Now the SCB feels it is entitled to FTX assets so that the liquidators can distribute them to creditors of FTX DM — whoever those might eventually turn out to be. [PwC]

The Bahamas side seems to be working on the theory that FTX DM was the operating center of the FTX companies. But FTX DM wasn’t even incorporated until July 22, 2021. It lay dormant for nearly a year and didn’t start operating in any manner until May 13, 2022. Note that’s a few days after the Terra-Luna collapse — FTX and Alameda were already utterly screwed by the time FTX DM was used for anything, suggesting that that may have been part of SBF’s reason to activate it.

The SCB pissed off Ray even further when, on December 29, they valued the FTX funds they seized late in the night on November 11 — in violation of the Chapter 11 stay — at $3.5 billion. This is mostly a pile of FTT tokens, whose market value is way less than $3.5 billion. FTX says the assets were worth just $296 million — “assuming the entire amount of FTT could be sold at spot prices at the time.” [SCB press release, PDF; FTX press release]

Christina Rolle, SCB executive director, said the Commission sought control of the crypto held by FTX after SBF and FTX cofounder Gary Wang told them about “hacking attempts overnight” — a perfect justification to seize the assets. Her affidavit, filed with the Supreme Court of the Bahamas, confirmed that SBF and Wang were behind the transfers on November 11 and 12. [Affidavit of Christina R. Rolle, PDF]

U.S. Federal prosecutors are looking into the $370 million hack — or “hack.” [Bloomberg]

Rolle also said that Tether gave the SCB 46 million tethers (USDT). SCB had asked Tether to freeze some USDT held by FTX DM or FTX Trading Ltd (it’s not clear which entity), then create 46 million fresh USDT and send it to SCB: 

76. Additionally, the Commission sent instructions for the transfer of approximately US $46 million Tether tokens to a secured wallet under the control of the Commission. These Tether tokens were not transferred to the Commission’s wallet but, after a meeting with Tether representatives, the Commission agreed that Tether, in light of the Chapter 11 proceedings, would maintain a freeze over the Tether tokens until ownership of the tokens is resolved.

This sounded odd to us — a “meeting with Tether representatives”? Coincidentally, the Bahamas Attorney General, Ryan Pinder, used to work for Deltec Bank, the bank associated with Tether.

The SCB then put out a press release on January 3 accusing Ray of “material misstatements” and having a “cavalier attitude to the truth.” They claim Ray is “promoting mistrust of public institutions in the Bahamas.” Well, yes, he is. [LinkedIn]

The joint provisional liquidators (JPLs) handling the FTX DM liquidation in the Bahamas have been pushing for access to substantial amounts of FTX data. Ray and his lawyers are working to make sure that never happens. Ray’s team has submitted piles of evidence pointing to the Bahamas government acting in bad faith.

FTX has filed an incendiary objection to the JPLs’ motion to compel the turnover of electronic records. This is a 37-page must-read rant: [FTX objection, PDF]

10. Finally, the stunning press release issued late yesterday, on December 29, 2022, by the Commission, along with certain related materials, is a game changer. The press release (and the supporting affidavit of the Executive Director of the Commission) boldly admits that the Commission violated the automatic stay in taking certain of the Debtors’ digital assets and then recklessly values the assets taken at $3.5 billion. As described in more detail below, yesterday’s disclosures demonstrate conclusively that the JPLs and the Commission are cooperating closely to do an end run around this Court and chapter 11. In a situation where maximizing recoveries for creditors should be the primary goal of all concerned, one can only wonder why.

We expect Ray isn’t wondering at all. He believes that “an elaborate and intentional game is being played” by the JPLs, the SCB, and the Bahamas government. As FTX says in their objection: “The fact that the founders left the Debtors more closely resembling a crime scene than an operating business cannot be ignored.”

FTX lawyer James Bromely filed a 675-page declaration, presenting exhibits to support their case. FTX financial advisor Edgar Mosley at Alvarez & Marsal also filed a 185-page declaration loaded with exhibits. [Bromely declaration, PDF; Mosley declaration, PDF]

The Mosley declaration details what business FTX Digital Markets actually did. FTX DM seems to have been Sam’s local partying fund:

17. The Debtors’ records reflect that $15.4 million for “Hotels & Accommodation” was paid primarily to three hotels in The Bahamas: the Albany ($5.8 million), the Grand Hyatt ($3.6 million), and the Rosewood ($807,000). The $6.9 million for “Meals & Entertainment” was paid primarily to Hyatt Services Caribbean ($1.4 million), Six Stars Catering ($974,000), and to three other catering and delivery services ($2.3 million in total).

18. The Debtors’ records reflect that in the first three quarters of 2022, FTX DM had total operating expenses of approximately $73 million, including over $40 million labeled “other expenses.”

19. The Debtors’ records reflect that FTX DM’s 2022 income statements show that FTX DM made no disbursements in connection with transaction, engineering or product expenses.

The newly formed Unsecured Creditors’ Committee in the U.S. chapter 11 also objects to the Bahamas motion. “These requests are sweeping and appear to be based on the faulty theory advanced by the JPLs that FTX DM was actually the nerve center of the FTX enterprise.” [Committee objection, PDF]

Just seizing some assets, don’t mind us

There was a scheduling conference in the Delaware FTX bankruptcy hearing on January 4. This wasn’t expected to be interesting — but Department of Justice Attorney Seth Shapiro made a surprise appearance over Zoom to let Judge Michael Dorsey know that the DoJ has been seizing assets.

SBF held a 7.6% stake in day trading brokerage Robinhood. He admitted to borrowing from Alameda in April and May to purchase the shares, in an Antigua court affidavit shortly before his arrest. [CoinDesk; affidavit, PDF]

SBF pledged the Robinhood shares to multiple companies as loan collateral. Who was getting the shares in the bankruptcy was a point of some contention. Now the DoJ has seized the shares.

Various bank accounts connected to the FTX Digital Markets (Bahamas) case and the JPLs motions for provisional relief, and the money in them, have also been seized. “We didn’t just want the court to read that in the papers filed by Silvergate and Moonstone” (FTX’s banks), said Shapiro. The DoJ also seized some cryptocurrency, though Shapiro didn’t say who from — the banks? The DoJ is working things out with the parties.

Shapiro told Judge Dorsey that the bank accounts had been seized with a view to “a criminal or asset forfeiture proceeding at some point down the line, in the Southern District of New York, to which entities could file claims.”

Shapiro said: “We either believe that these assets are not the property of the bankruptcy estate or that they fall within the exceptions under sections 362(b)(1) and/or (b)(4) of the bankruptcy code.” 362(b) is about criminal proceedings. [LII]

The Bahamas JPLs, who were also hoping for the contents of these bank accounts, are in touch with the DoJ.

Sam did nothing* wrong

Sam Bankman-Fried stood before U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan on January 3 and pleaded not guilty to all eight counts against him. SBF actually flew to New York for his arraignment and had to squeeze through a mob of reporters to enter the courthouse. The judge set a tentative trial date of October 2. [Twitter; Twitter thread; NYT]

Sam thinks he’s too smart, rich, and pretty to go to jail. He just needs to explain things properly to the people in charge, and it’ll all be fine. 

SBF’s not-guilty plea doesn’t necessarily mean a trial will happen. SBF and his lawyer Mark Cohen are likely just buying time so they can negotiate a better deal with the prosecutors. We very much doubt the case will go to trial, or that Sam’s parents would be able to foot the legal bill if it did.

More funds mysteriously moved out of Alameda wallets on December 27, mainly illiquid altcoins being swapped for ETH and BTC. Over $1 million in funds were sent through crypto mixers, according to crypto intelligence firm Arkham. [Twitter; Decrypt]

This isn’t the work of a liquidator. Sam says it wasn’t him, even though Sam, FTX co-founder Gary Wang, and FTX director of engineering Nishad Singh were the only ones who had access to the keys. Reddit user Settless notes that SBF had previously claimed to own these addresses: “The pattern is similar — the wallet receives funds and swaps them via no-KYC exchange to launder the funds.” [Twitter; Reddit]

The U.S. isn’t happy about this movement of crypto. During SBF’s arraignment in Manhattan, the prosecutors asked the court to add a new condition to the bond: that Sam be prohibited from accessing or transferring any FTX or Alameda assets. Judge Kaplan agreed. 

Molly Crane-Newman from the NY Daily News said: “SBF became animated when prosecutors successfully requested that the judge prohibit him from accessing or transferring FTX assets — furiously writing notes to his attorneys on a legal pad and pointing to them with a biro.” [Twitter]

The judge also agreed to the redaction of names and addresses of Sam’s two additional bail signers — who he may not have actually found yet. The press has until January 12 to file any objections to this. Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press has already filed an application to unseal the names. [Motion, PDF; Twitter; Application to Unseal]

Two of SBF’s associates, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, have already pleaded guilty in the hopes of getting a lesser sentence. John Reed Stark ordered and posted their plea agreements and hearing transcripts. [LinkedIn; Ellison plea, PDF; Ellison agreement, PDF; Wang plea, PDF; Wang agreement, PDF]

* except all the things he may possibly, hypothetically, have done wrong

Other perfectly normal happenings in FTX

North Dimension, the company that FTX customers were unknowingly sending their actual U.S. dollars to, was a fake online electronics retailer. North Dimension has two accounts at Silvergate Bank. [archived website; NBC News]

The assorted shenanigans with FTX likely explain why Silvergate Bank (NASDAQ: SI) has 54% of its shares sold short. Smart investors know how this will end. [Fintel]

John Reed Stark discusses FTX investors getting hosed on CNBC Squawkbox. [YouTube]

“Beyond Blame: The philosophy of personal responsibility has ruined criminal justice and economic policy. It’s time to move past blame” — by Barbara H. Fried. Now, you might say that if Sam’s circumstances are to blame for his apparent crimes, then Barbara happens to be one of those circumstances. [Boston Review, 2013]

Someone made an NFT with actual artistic value. We’ve used it as the feature image for this article. [OpenSea]

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

FTX updates: How Sam Bankman-Fried got bail, and more

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

The entire industry is Wile E Coyote and they don’t want to look down because if they don’t look down gravity won’t acknowledge they are standing on the clear blue sky.

Patrick McKenzie

How SBF got out on bail

How did Sam Bankman-Fried get out on $250 million bail with only his parent’s $4 million Palo Alto house put up as security? A lot of people — including lawyers! — are confused by this.

The short answer is that federal court, unlike state courts, defaults to the presumption of release.

Sam was released to stay with his parents on his own personal recognizance — which is little more than a promise that he’ll show up in court again. There’s no financial obligation. The terms of Sam’s bond initially required the signatures of Sam and his parents — Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman — for his initial release on December 22. [Bail disposition, PDF; Appearance bond, PDF]

The idea of bail is to make sure that the accused will show up in court. In the federal court system, the Bail Reform Act of 1984 says that unless someone is a flight risk, they should get bail — and the court has great leeway in setting conditions.

The judge was reasonably sure that SBF wasn’t a flight risk. This was his first arrest, he wasn’t accused of a violent crime, he was a publicly-known person, and he complied with extradition. He did have to give up his passport, though. He can’t leave Palo Alto other than to show up in court in New York.

Bail works completely differently for federal white-collar defendants than for poor people accused of crimes in a state court — where bail can be arbitrary without regard to ability to pay, and is often punitive and used to try to coerce the defendant into pleading guilty. This is the sort of bail most people will have heard about, and that seems to be the source of the confusion.

Compare Reggie Fowler, Bitfinex/Tether’s money man in the U.S. The government pushed hard to have Fowler held as a flight risk. But the judge let Fowler out on a $5 million personal recognizance bond, and he hasn’t flown yet — though his sentencing has been delayed to March. In SBF’s case, federal prosecutors weren’t even pushing to hold him.

Many are also wondering why SBF’s parents did not have to come up with 10% of the bail, or $25 million, for the bond. This is also a misconception about state versus federal bail — where the convention is that you can pay a bail bondsman a nonrefundable 10% of your bail and he’ll put up the rest. Again, this is not at all a requirement at the federal level.

While Sam and his parents didn’t have to put any money down, it’s another story if Sam disappears. Sam’s parents’ home could be seized and the government could hold the bond co-signers liable for the full amount of the bond — which Sam’s parents obviously won’t be able to pay.

In SBF’s bail is a provision that by January 5, he has to find two wealthy friends, one of whom must be a non-family member, to put up surety — they need to sign bonds in lesser amounts “to be agreed to.” But if Sam can’t find anyone else to sign, it’s not clear how concerned the court will be, as long as Sam doesn’t flee and doesn’t violate other bail conditions. Sam’s parents have until January 12 to post the equity interest in their home.

The house is technically owned by Stanford University — the original Stanford land grant said that the land could not be sold. Professors buy a multi-decade lease on houses on campus, and Bankman and Fried put up their interest in that lease as security for the bail. This does not mean that Stanford is putting up Sam’s bail, as some have been claiming.

Ken White, better known as Popehat, a criminal lawyer in Los Angeles, was surprised that the court agreed to let Sam out on bail. Is the prospect of bankrupting his parents enough to keep Sam from misbehaving? “Personally, he strikes me as a man-child sociopath unlikely to be deterred by the complete destruction of his family.”[Serious Trouble] 

Fresh hell from FTX

Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang had their plea hearings on December 19. The hearings weren’t open to the public. Bloomberg reporters went and got the transcript from the court. (You have to go to the court physically.) Ellison and Wang both said they acted as directed by Sam Bankman-Fried, and they knew what they were doing was wrong. [Bloomberg]

Ronnie Abrams, the Southern District of New York judge who was overseeing the SBF case, has stepped down: “It has come to the Court’s attention that the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, at which my husband is a partner, advised FTX in 2021, as well as represented parties that may be adverse to FTX and Defendant Bankman-Fried.” [Bloomberg]

SBF appears to have pledged the same shares in day-trader brokerage Robinhood as collateral for multiple loans. There are now four jackals circling the corpse: BlockFi, FTX creditor Yonathan Ben Shimon, FTX led by John Jay Ray, and SBF himself, who has mounting legal bills. FTX has asked the court to freeze the shares until the issue is sorted out. [Doc 291, PDF]

SBF hasn’t posted to Twitter since December 12. But he’s still using Twitter, and just followed Dogecoin co-creator, Billy Markus. [Reddit]

Other FTX fallout

The collapse of FTX had systemic effects on crypto. Basically, everyone was just using FTX as their bank.

Didier J. Mary follows crypto-colonialism, where cryptocurrency missionaries try to inveigle themselves into poor countries — now that America is sick of crypto. Smart but poor people in Africa, wanting an opportunity, thought crypto might work to help them get ahead. The usual flurry of crypto-trader academies, masterclasses, and hype followed. Bank the unbanked!

A huge number of these African enterprises kept their cryptos at FTX — the blockchain contingent at the World Economic Forum promoted FTX in particular. That’s all gone now, and everyone’s wrecked. This post is in French but is very readable with a translator. [LinkedIn, in French]

Sam Bankman-Fried ended up putting $100 million into Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. John Ray will definitely be calling to get that back. [Semafor]

Brendan Greeley from the Financial Times has locked down his Twitter in these post-Musk times, but in 2018 he gave us “Greeley’s First Law of Capitalism: Any industry that can afford stadium naming rights needs more aggressive regulation.” [Twitter]

Even Zhu Su from Three Arrows Capital (3AC) was calling out Alameda in 2019. [Twitter, archive] 

A&P has provided me with the world’s smallest turkey

As you sit around the Christmas table with the family, don’t forget to ask that relative how their “bot-coins” are going. Merry Christmas, and don’t let the buttcoins bite.

Feature image: This terrible picture is from a 2021 FTX Christmas tweet, in which Santa Sam takes treats out of the stockings and sends them to Alameda. [Twitter]

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

FTX: Sam Bankman-Fried out on bail, Ellison and Wang cop pleas

We just posted our latest coverage on the FTX saga. This one is on David’s blog. [David Gerard]

SBF is back on US soil, after being escorted by the FBI from the Bahamas to NY, and yes, he is free on bail. His parent’s secured their Palo Alto home on a $250 million personal recognizance bond. Their home is only worth a fraction of that.

SBF’s friends Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang have been charged as well, but they’ve ratted Sam out to save themselves. 

Expect more superseding indictments to come. The DoJ is coming down fast and hard on FTX.

The entire game in crypto right now is pretending you’re solvent when you’re not. We’ve put together a list of clever tricks that crypto firms are currently employing to do this. 

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Crypto collapse: Regulatory altruism at FTX — Sam Bankman-Fried arrested

While I’ve been sick with a bug for a few days, David was able to finish up and post our latest. This one is on his blog. [David Gerard]

“Take the money and run” is a plan with just two parts. Sam Bankman-Fried completely failed to get around to the second part.  

After SBF’s extensive tour of confessing financial crimes to anyone from the press who would listen, the Weasel of Wall Street was arrested in the Bahamas at the request of the U.S. on Monday, December 12, where he awaits extradition.

Image by npcdad on Reddit

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Crypto collapse: BlockFi even deader, crypto miners going broke, Sam will not shut up, Binance and Tether are fine

the wonderful thing about bitcoin is that ‘sorry i was too dumb to do things properly so it all collapsed’ is not only a feasible explanation but historically likely

— Boxturret on SomethingAwful

Shut up, Sam

If you may be in legal trouble, any lawyer has one piece of advice: stop talking. If you’ve just filed a high-profile bankruptcy with maybe billions of dollars missing: stop talking. If you’ve got prosecutors sniffing around your activities: stop talking.

Sam Bankman-Fried never got the memo, or he did and threw it in the trash. In reference to his lawyers, he told Tiffany Fong: “they know what they’re talking about in an extremely narrow domain of litigation. They don’t understand the broader context of the world.” [YouTube; Twitter]

Despite producing reams of potential “evidence” that could one day be used against him, SBF will talk to any reporter, anywhere, any time of day. On Wednesday, November 29 he spoke on an NYT DealBook panel. On Thursday, November 30, he spoke to Good Morning America.

He loves the camera. But he still can’t tell you where the money went.

In the DealBook interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, SBF said he “never tried to commit fraud,” and he didn’t knowingly commingle $10 billion in customer funds. He frames the whole matter as he seemingly lent Alameda customer funds from FTX as a risk management problem that got out of hand. Well, it sure did that. [Video; Transcript] 

George Stephanopoulos from Good Morning America, who actually flew to the Bahamas to talk to SBF, was a lot tougher on him. SBF again denied “improper use of customer funds,” saying he failed at oversight. “You said one of your great talents in a podcast was managing risk.” “That’s right.” “Well, it’s obviously wrong.” [GMA; Twitter]

As Lying for Money author Dan Davies points out, prosecutors just have to show that SBF intentionally deceived clients as to what was happening to their money. When you tell people their money is segregated and it’s not, that’s fraud. “The offence was committed the minute it went in the wrong account.” [Twitter]

If you ignore your lawyer because you’re smarter than everyone, no lawyer is going to work with you. Martin Flumenbaum at Paul Weiss already dumped SBF. We’re hearing unconfirmed rumors that David Mills, his father’s colleague at Stanford, who was advising SBF, is also refusing to work with him further. [Semafor; Twitter]

A lot of FTX employees bailed after the company filed for bankruptcy. But a few have soldiered on — likely so they can nail SBF, who screwed them over about as much as he screwed over all of his customers and investors. While SBF is telling his side of the story to reporters, FTX employees are leaking emails. NYT wrote about the absolute chaos that FTX lawyers and execs endured in wresting power away from the deluded SBF in the wee hours of November 11. [NYT]

If Sam’s lawyer had jumped in front of the camera and ripped Sam’s larynx out with his bare hands, he could reasonably bill it as extremely valuable and important legal services to his client.

Extremely predictably, there goes BlockFi 

In January, there were three big crypto lenders — Celsius, Voyager, and BlockFi. Now all three are bankrupt, and our emails are clogged with new bankruptcy filings.

After weeks of frozen withdrawals, BlockFi filed for voluntary Chapter 11 on November 28 in New Jersey. [Petition, PDF; bankruptcy docket on Kroll; CNBC; press release]

BlockFi was already a dead firm walking. They were dead after Three Arrows blew up in May. FTX kept BlockFi’s head above water with a $400 million credit facility — but then FTX imploded. [Twitter] 

The New Jersey firm doesn’t just have more liabilities than assets — a lot of the assets are missing too. All of BlockFi’s cryptos were in FTX. They were using FTX as their crypto bank.

BlockFi has over 100,000 creditors. Assets and liabilities range between $1 billion and $10 billion. There’s $1.3 billion in unsecured loans outstanding and $250 million in customer funds locked on the platform.

BlockFi has $256.5 million cash on hand — after selling their customers’ crypto:

In preparation for these chapter 11 cases, BlockFi took steps to liquidate certain of its owned cryptocurrency to bolster available cash to fund its business and administrative costs. Through the process, BlockFi was able to raise $238.6 million of additional cash, for a total unencumbered cash position as of the Petition date of $256.5 million.

Ankura Trust is BlockFi’s largest unsecured creditor to which it owes $729 million. Ankura is typically brought in to represent the interest of others in bankruptcy. If so, who are those creditors? We’d love to know.

FTX US is BlockFi’s second-largest unsecured creditor, with a $275 million stablecoin loan. This is the credit facility that SBF “bailed out” BlockFi with in June.

BlockFi’s fourth-largest unsecured creditor is the SEC — BlockFi still owes $30 million of its $50 million in penalties from February. The total settlement was $100 million, with half owed to the SEC and half owed to state regulators. [SEC; Twitter]

All the other creditors’ names are redacted. Very crypto.

BlockFi is entangled in FTX in multiple ways. BlockFi had a $680 million loan to SBF’s Alameda Research. This was collateralized by SBF’s personal shareholding in popular day-trading broker Robinhood — just days before FTX filed for bankruptcy. BlockFi is suing SBF for his stake in Robinhood. It doesn’t help that SBF was shopping his Robinhood shares around as collateral after he’d pledged them to the BlockFi loan. [Filing, PDF; Complaint, PDF; Bloomberg] 

Crypto miners — we told you so

We set out in detail in August this year how publicly traded bitcoin mining companies were always going to leave their lenders and investors as the bag holders.

We predicted that the miners would default on billions of dollars in loans, leaving the lenders with worthless mining rigs and unsaleable piles of bitcoins. They would then go bankrupt — with all the paperwork in order.

The miners depreciated their mining rigs over five years — and not the 15 months they should have — to make their companies look like better investments.

And miners are now defaulting on their rig-backed loans. Lenders — New York Digital Investment Group, Celsius, BlockFi, Galaxy Digital, NYDIG, and DCG’s Foundry — are getting stuck with worthless e-waste. [Bloomberg]

Iris Energy (IREN) faced a default claim from its lender NYDIG on $103 million “worth” of mining equipment. The company’s miners aren’t making enough money to service their debt. So Iris defaulted! And NYDIG now owns some obsolete mining rigs. [SEC filing, Global Newswire; Coindesk; CoinTelegraph]

Shares in Argo Blockchain (ARBK) dropped 40% after the firm announced that its plans to raise $27 million by selling shares were no longer happening. [Twitter; Decrypt]

Core Scientific hired law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges and financial advisors PJT Partners to help figure out ways to stave off bankruptcy. The options include exchanging existing debt for equity or additional debt, asset sales, equity, or debt financing. They’re gonna go bankrupt — because that was always the exit strategy. [The Block]

Binance goes shopping

In the financial crisis of 2008, when banks were dropping like flies, some big banks would buy smaller banks that had healthy books — so they could patch the holes in their own books. Bigger and bigger shells to hide the Ponzi under. 

Crypto is doing the same. FTX was buying up, and planning to buy up, small bankrupt crypto firms to try to hide the hole in its own books. And Binance, the largest crypto exchange, just bought Sakuro Exchange BitCoin (SEBC), a Japanese exchange that is already licensed with the country’s Financial Services Agency. [Binance; Bloomberg]

Japan learned its lesson early. Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, one of the first big bitcoin exchanges, blew up in 2014. Japan went on to become one of the first countries to regulate crypto exchanges with a licensing system. Crypto exchanges in Japan are required to keep customer assets separate, maintain proper bookkeeping, undergo annual audits, file business reports, and comply with strict KYC/AML rules. They are treated almost like banks! [Bitcoin Magazine]

Binance tried to set up operations in Japan in 2018, after getting kicked out of China — but Japan’s FSA told Binance they needed to play by the rules and apply for a license or pack their bags. [Bitcoin Magazine]

Binance’s bogus bailout fund 

Binance announced a $2 billion “industry recovery fund” to prop up all of the other flailing crypto firms that have been struggling since FTX blew up. They claim that 150 crypto firms have applied for a bailout. [Bloomberg] 

Binance has its own stablecoin, BUSD, that it claims is run by Paxos and Binance, “and is one of the few stablecoins that are compliant with the strict regulatory standards of NYDFS.” The crypto bailout fund is $2 billion in BUSD.

BUSD is a Paxos-administered dollar stablecoin. Each BUSD is backed by an alleged actual dollar in Silvergate Bank, and attested by auditors. (If not actually audited as such).

That’s true of BUSD on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s not true of BUSD on Binance.

BUSD on Binance is on their internal BNB (formerly BSC) blockchain, bridged from Ethereum. It’s a stablecoin of a stablecoin. Binance makes a point of noting that Binance-BUSD is not subject to the legal controls that Paxos BUSD is under. We’re sure it’ll all be fine if there are any issues, which there totally won’t be. [Binance] 

Treating FTX’s claims about other crypto firms as confessions would have given you pretty detailed correct answers — it was all projection. FTX was accusing others of what they were doing themselves. You should look at what Binance has been saying the same way.

We’re going to go so far as to assert that Binance is a hollow shell too, and the bailout fund is most likely for a hole in its own books.

Every one of the crypto companies accounts for their value in dollars by calculating their mark-to-market value. “We have a billion dollars of $CONFETTI!” Even if they couldn’t get $10,000 in actual money for it.

All of crypto is bankrupt if you account for the crypto assets at realizable value rather than mark-to-market. Realizable value depends on the inflow of actual dollars into crypto — and that inflow has plummeted because the retail suckers went home. 

All crypto companies are Quadriga. Pull back the curtain and you’ll see Celsius/FTX-style non-accounting, a Google spreadsheet if you’re lucky, and incompetence. Such utter blithering didn’t-understand-the-question incompetence. It’s been this way since 2011.

Tether is fine, you FUDster

Tether has been issuing tethers by lending out its USDT stablecoin, rather than exchanging the USDT one-to-one for dollars (LOL).

As of Tether’s attestation for September 30, 2022, 9% of USDT are loans to Tether customers. Tether claims these are collateralized — but they won’t say who the borrowers are or what the collateral is. [Tether; WSJ, paywalled]

In their long-winded response to the WSJ writeup, Tether blames …. the media. [Tether]

We know from the CFTC settlement in October 2021 that Tether was issuing USDT to its big customers with a kiss and a handshake. Now they’re admitting it publicly.

Other crypto exchanges/firms in trouble

CoinDesk’s report on the hole in Alameda’s balance sheet and Alameda’s close ties to FTX did so much damage to the crypto industry — and to Coindesk’s parent company Digital Currency Group — that the news site has attracted take-over interest. [Semafor] 

CoinDesk did not blow apart the crypto industry. This was an unexploded bomb that was set up in May.

It was all going to explode eventually as soon as someone looked inside the box. As CZ told The Block’s Larry Cermak in 2019: “some things are better left unsaid.” [Twitter] 

Japanese social media company Line is shutting down Bitfront, a US-based crypto exchange that it launched in 2020. They said the closure was unrelated to “certain exchanges that have been accused of misconduct.” [Announcement; Bloomberg]

AAX exit scam completed. Hong Kong-based exchange AAX froze withdrawals on November 13, and its executives quietly slipped away as opposed to filing bankruptcy — social media pages removed, LinkedIn profiles deleted. Sources tell us that employees have been laid off and the founders are nowhere to be found. [Hacker News; AAX]

John Reed Stark: Since the FTX debacle, Big Crypto’s SEC hit pieces and talking points calling for “regulatory clarity” are pure pretense and subterfuge, intended to distract and dissemble the truth — that the crypto-emperor has no clothes. [Duke FinReg Blog] 

Image: Sam talking on GMA

Posted on by Amy Castor 3

Declaration of John Jay Ray — FTX is worse than Enron

John Jay Ray III took over FTX in the wee hours of November 11. Hours later, he filed for Chapter 11 in a Delaware court.

The new CEO filed his first-day declaration this morning. It’s incredible. David Gerard and I summarize it — this one is on David’s blog. [David Gerard]

  • In his 40-year career, Ray, who oversaw the Enron liquidation, has never seen “such a complete failure of corporate controls.”  
  • Ray has divided SBF’s empire into four silos, but the accounting is all unreliable because he’s gotten the numbers from SBF. 
  • Ray and his team will have to create a balance sheet and financial statements from scratch using what records they have of cash transactions.
  • FTX Digital Markets, the company’s Bahamas subsidiary, filed a for Chapter 15 in SDNY. Ray’s team is asking the court to move the Chapter 15 case to Delaware. 
  • Ray thinks the filing in SDNY was shenanigans by SBF and unnamed agents of the Bahamas government!
  • SBF’s late night DMs with a Vox reporter, published the next day, make it looks like he was in on the plot.
Posted on by Amy Castor 0

FTX files for bankruptcy, and the fallout begins. Who’s next?

It’s been an exhausting week trying to keep up with the chaotic news coming out on FTX. Here’s our latest crypto collapse update and analysis. This one is on David’s blog. [David Gerard]

While many people have been comparing the fall of FTX to Enron or Lehman Brothers, it’s really more like MF Global, a major global financial derivatives broker that went belly-up in 2011.

MF Global’s fatal flaw was the same as FTX-Alameda: They failed to segregate funds and used billions of dollars in customer money to cover up losses in trading.

Everyone should have seen this crash coming, especially the “sophisticated” venture capitalists who neglected to do due diligence on FTX and instead kept shoveling money into the fire, creating the myth of Sam Bankman-Fried, boy genius, in the process.

You should assume that every offshore crypto firm is like the failed Canadian exchange Quadriga — Zeppelins flying high, waiting for a single spark to set them off.  

Image: Hindenburg exploding

Posted on by Amy Castor 1

Crypto collapse: J. Pierpont Moneygone — FTX rekt, bought by Binance

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard
  • Send us money! Our work is funded by our Patreons — here’s Amy’s, and here’s David’s. Your monthly contributions help greatly!

The 2021–2022 crypto bubble made a lot of traders look like geniuses. Then the bubble popped, the tide went out, and the traders turned out to be hugely overleveraged formerly-lucky idiots.

Sociologists know that when a cult prophecy fails, most cultists exit the cult, and the remaining factions turn on each other.

Crypto watchers know that this can also be exceedingly funny.

Imaginary assets, real liabilities

Sam Bankman-Fried’s boosters compare him to the legendary banker J. P. Morgan. He’s spent the crypto collapse bailing out ailing companies to keep the entire market afloat.

Bankman-Fried runs three large crypto enterprises:

  1. Alameda Research, his crypto hedge fund;
  2. FTX, his unregulated offshore crypto casino that doesn’t allow US customers;
  3. FTX US, his exchange for US customers that purports to operate under US law and accepts actual dollars.

On November 2, Coindesk’s Ian Allison posted an explosive story on a partially leaked balance sheet for Alameda. [CoinDesk]

Of Alameda’s $14.6 billion in claimed assets, $5.8 billion is FTT — FTX’s internal exchange token. You can use FTT for cheaper trading fees and increased commissions. FTT is also traded outside FTX.

Allison also noted that $5.8 billion is actually 180% of the circulating supply of FTT!

Alameda’s liabilities are listed at $8 billion, most of which is $7.4 billion of loans — quite a bit of that from FTX.

Alameda is super cashed-up … if you account for FTX’s own FTT token at mark-to-market, and not what you could actually get for that much of their private illiquid altcoin.

To make matters worse, Dirty Bubble notes that a lot of Alameda’s other assets are crypto tokens from other Sam Bankman-Fried enterprises. [Dirty Bubble Media]

Alameda and FTX seem to have printed FTT, pumped its price using customer assets — FTX was quite open that it was the FTT market maker, and there’s no other real demand — and used the mark-to-market value of their illiquid made-up token as collateral for loans, or as evidence that pension funds should invest in crypto companies.

This works great while number is going up!

Regular readers will know that this sort of flywheel scheme is precisely what Celsius Network tried to run with their CEL token and Nexo with their NEXO token. Celsius is bankrupt, and regulators have noticed that Nexo is only solvent if you allow them this particular tricky bit of accounting.

Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison said the leaked balance sheet Coindesk got a hold of was “incomplete,” and there were $10 billion in assets not listed there. [Twitter, archive] 

The crypto world spent a few days wondering if Alameda was the next Three Arrows Capital.

CZ pulls the plug

Large flows of FTT were noticed on the blockchain on November 6. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao confirmed that this was Binance selling off its FTT: [Twitter, archive]

“As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books.”

The remaining FTT that Binance sold was worth $530 million. [Bloomberg]

CZ was also annoyed at Bankman-Fried’s lobbying efforts for crypto regulation in Washington: “We won’t support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs.” [Twitter, archive]

The crypto market is incredibly shaky. Alameda and FTX operate as separate corporations, but the market seems to think they’re closely entwined. Trouble at Alameda leads to worry about FTX.

So panicked holders, thinking Alameda might be insolvent, started withdrawing funds from FTX as fast as possible — and hardly deposited anything at all.

FTX paused all withdrawals on the Ethereum, Solana, and Tron blockchains around 11:37 a.m. UTC on November 8, according to Steven Zheng at The Block. [The Block]

Finally, just after 4 p.m. UTC, Bankman-Fried and CZ announced that Binance was buying FTX. Specifically, they have a non-binding letter of intent, pending due diligence. [Twitter, archive; Twitter, archive]

Essentially, CZ started a bank run on FTX, then swooped in to buy his competitor after breaking it. CZ did to Bankman-Fried what Bankman-Fried has been accused of doing to a string of others.

At present, this is only a letter of intent, not a done deal — CZ is making Bankman-Fried suffer. He could just let FTX go hang.

How screwed are FTX and Alameda?

CZ said FTX was in a “significant liquidity crunch.” This is the sort of “liquidity crunch” that everyone else calls “insolvency.” If it were just liquidity, FTX could have borrowed against its assets and found another way out of this. [Twitter, archive]

We don’t know for sure that Alameda was trading with FTX customer funds — but this sort of fractional reserve operation is the only not-entirely-fraudulent reason that FTX could have run out of customer funds in this way.

Bankman-Fried claimed on November 7 that “FTX has enough to cover all client holdings. We don’t invest client assets (even in treasuries).” This appears not to have been true, and he later deleted the tweet. [Twitter, archive]

If FTX couldn’t get its funds back from Alameda quickly, that would have then led to the liquidity crunch.

What about FTX US?

Bankman-Fried was quick to reassure customers that FTX US was not affected and that it was “fully backed 1:1, and operating normally.” So at least FTX US explicitly claims it isn’t playing the markets with your deposits. [Twitter, archive]  

FTX US is also attempting to buy the remains of the bankrupt Voyager Digital, a deal that we think is likely to go through.

The separation of customer funds and platforms is the whole point of FTX US versus FTX. It’s there to make Sam look good to regulators.

But it’s all Sam Bankman-Fried. It’s Sam’s left pocket versus his right pocket.

We think that if your paycheck goes into FTX US, you probably want to stop doing that immediately.

What happens next? It’s contagion time!

Alameda has likely been borrowing against the FTT it held — the FTT that is now crashing. (Earlier today, FTT was worth $19; as we post this, it’s trading at $4.60.)

Binance might rescue FTX, but it’s sure not going to rescue Alameda.

This means a series of margin calls by everyone who’s lent to Alameda. If Alameda defaults, those lenders will likely end up with worthless FTT.

BlockFi and Genesis have a pile of money in Alameda. BlockFi is or will be owned in some unspecified manner by FTX US, but that doesn’t make the books balance — there’s already a rumor of a 24-hour margin call by BlockFi against Alameda. [Twitter]

Remember that Three Arrows Capital collapsed when their UST turned out to be worthless. This then took out a pile of other crypto trading firms — most notably Celsius Network and Voyager Digital.

We’re left with two questions:

  1. Who is lending to Alameda?
  2. Who’s lending to those lenders — and risks going down in turn?

The crypto market is not happy. Bitcoin has been up and down like a yo-yo today, from $19,500 just before 4 p.m. UTC to a peak of $20,500 and a trough of $17,500.

We predict more market excitement to come — specifically, a possible Alameda collapse, a chain reaction of lender failures, and attempts to cover sudden balance-sheet holes, much as we saw after the Terra-Luna and Three Arrows collapses.

But Caroline Ellison from Alameda insists there’s another $10 billion behind the sofa or something. Maybe it’s all fine!

Image: FT Alphaville

Posted on by Amy Castor 2

Crypto collapse: 40 states chasing Celsius for possible securities fraud; Texas chasing Voyager and FTX for possible securities fraud

  • By Amy Castor and David Gerard

“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.” 

~ Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Celsius: dodge the cops by diving down the drain

Celsius Network seems to be admitting the company’s dead and it’s not coming back. The debtor companies filed a motion on September 29 to sell off whatever assets remain.

The leading contender is, wait for it, Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX, who was previously noted to be sniffing around the gaping balance sheet hole called Celsius. [Bloomberg]

Here’s the filing to sell off everything, with its marvelous title in full: Debtors’ Motion Seeking Entry of an Order (I) Approving the Bidding Procedures in Connection with the Sale of Substantially All of the Debtors’ Assets, (II) Scheduling Certain Dates with Respect Thereto, (III) Approving the Form and Manner of Notice Thereof, (IV) Approving Contract Assumption and Assignment Procedures, and (V) Granting Related Relief. [Motion, PDF]

The filing asks to start a bidding process, in a conventional manner, for any remaining spare change to be found in the stiff’s pockets. Celsius would like bids to be put in by November 15, with a hearing to approve the winner around November 28. Celsius hopes to sell any remaining assets by December 20. The auction would be advertised in the New York Times and CoinDesk.  

This isn’t actually a bad idea. We’ve said repeatedly that taking Celsius out of everyone’s misery is the right move. Celsius is an ex-parrot. It is bereft of life. There’s no viable business here. In any ordinary bankruptcy, selling off whatever’s left would be the correct thing to do at this point.

But this isn’t an ordinary bankruptcy. Vermont’s filing sets out the issues. There have been shenanigans here, and Vermont doesn’t want those put aside before the examiner can report: [Objection, PDF]

“As of the Petition Date, at least 40 state securities regulators were engaged in a multistate investigation arising from, inter alia, concerns about potential unregistered securities activity, mismanagement, securities fraud, and market manipulation by Celsius and its principals. At least six of those states had taken regulatory enforcement action against Celsius as of the Petition date, and several more states have done so since then.”

Ownership of the “custody” and “withhold” accounts have yet to be resolved. Do the accounts belong in full to the named creditors or are they part of the general pool of assets? (See our list of Celsius account types.) And who owns the stablecoins?

If any of the assets constitute securities, Vermont wants those to be registered as offerings of securities. (Spoiler: many of them are likely to constitute securities, and none are registered.)

Also unresolved: Celsius insiders withdrew nearly $18 million in cryptos in the weeks before Celsius froze withdrawals on June 12.  

Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, California, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, New York, North Dakota, and Oklahoma all concur with Vermont’s objections. The states want to see the examiner’s report before any sale goes forward. They also want to approve the bidders to verify that they are compliant with state regulations, or can become compliant in a timely manner. [Texas objection, PDF; Coordinating states’ objection, PDF]

The US Trustee also objects to the auction. As well as the above objections, the Trustee asks that a privacy ombudsman be appointed, as “customers of these Debtors have significant concerns regarding transparency and irregularities.” [Objection, PDF]

Some individual creditors object on the same grounds — e.g., Daniel Frishberg, who thinks the examiner’s report may show that Celsius was a Ponzi scheme. Immanuel Herrmann has objected on behalf of an unofficial “Steering Committee” of Earn, Loans, and CEL depositors — they don’t object to an asset sale but do feel this current proposal is rushed. [Frishberg objection, PDF; Herrmann objection, PDF]

The forlorn quest for your money

The US Trustee held a 341 creditors’ meeting on October 13. Celsius interim CEO Chris Ferraro responded to questions under oath — and Ferraro knows nothing, nothing! Most of his answers amounted to “I’ll have to follow up on that,” “I don’t know,” and “I need to consult with my lawyers.” [Reddit]

The next Celsius hearing is on October 20 at 10 am ET. There’s an omnibus hearing on November 1 at 11 a.m. ET.  Custody and withhold hearings are scheduled for December 7 and 8 at 9 a.m. ET. [Schedule, PDF]

Celsius has requested to set a “bar date,” the deadline for customers to submit proofs of claims, of December 13, 2022. [Motion, PDF]

If you agree with the schedules of assets and liabilities that Celsius filed earlier, you don’t need to file a claim. Go to page 92 to check your claim. [Schedule, PDF]

If you do need to file a claim, Celsius has submitted a form for approval with the bar date motion. 

An inspector calls

As soon as she was appointed examiner in the Celsius bankruptcy on September 29, Shoba Pillay, previously an assistant US attorney, set to work.

She has already spoken to the debtors. She has outlined the various documents she will be requesting and has set forth a plan on how to avoid duplicating work already done.

Pillay has also filed a “Rule 2004 Motion,” to collect almost anything she might need. This motion will be heard on October 20 and is sure to be granted. [Rule 2004 motion, PDF; Notice motion, PDF]

Federal Rule of Bankruptcy 2004 — that’s a rule number, not a year — allows tremendously broad discovery and deposition. A witness in a 2004 examination is not always entitled to attorney representation or cross-examination and has only a limited right to object to questions. 2004 exams are sometimes referred to as “fishing expeditions” — because they need to be, in order to do their job. [Cullen Dykman; Nolo]

Pillay has proposed a work plan: [Motion, PDF]

  • Interview 15 to 25 witnesses under Rule 2004.
  • Monitor investigations by governmental entities.
  • Hire professionals as needed. She’s already put forth a motion to retain as counsel Jenner & Block, the Chicago law firm where she serves as a partner.
  • Hire Huron Consulting Group as her forensic accounting and financial advisor. 
  • Ascertain if the scope of the investigation needs to be expanded.

Hosting services

Core Scientific provides hosting services to Celsius Mining. Core claims the bankrupt company owes them $5.4 million. They’re tired of subsidizing Celsius’ failing mining business. They want their money, or they want out of their contract before Celsius turns them into a dead parrot too.  

Celsius argues that Core breached their agreement by failing to deploy mining machines on time, and is unjustly trying to pass on power charges. They say Core is in violation of the automatic stay, which stops creditors from trying to collect debts until court bankruptcy proceedings are completed. They have called for a hearing on October 20 to ask the court to enforce the stay. [Filing, PDF; Coindesk; The Block]

Core responded saying that Celsius’ claims were “premised on the incorrect notion that Core Scientific must subsidize the Debtors’ money-losing mining business to the tune of millions of dollars a month.” 

Core says they have deployed all of the mining equipment Celsius gave them and are paying out of pocket to keep the machines running. They are seeking relief from the court to either terminate their contract or to get paid. They want to delay the hearing on October 20 and they are requesting a status conference. [Letter, PDF]

Celsius’s lawyers responded that Core’s request for a status conference is “unwarranted and premature.” We think Celsius is dragging this out for as long as they can run up a tab with Core that will never be paid. [Letter, PDF]

Cold, so cold

There’s a new tool that lets you search the Celsius creditor database with your name and find your coinage! You can use the leaderboard to find the top losers. [Celsiusnetworth; Gizmodo]

US federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York subpoenaed Celsius days after it blocked withdrawals in June. The subpoena was issued by a grand jury. Federal grand juries are used by Department of Justice prosecutors to conduct criminal investigations and potentially issue indictments. [FT, archive] 

The SDNY subpoena is disclosed on p. 48 of this October 5 filing. Pages 48-50 list investigations by multiple state regulators. [Filing, PDF]

Celsius has filed its proposal for a key employee retention plan (KERP). They want to divvy up $2.96 million amongst 62 key non-insider employees — so as to keep them working on the dumb “Kelvin” plan to revive this dead parrot. Celsius currently has 275 employees in total. [Motion, PDF]

Alex Mashinsky, who recently stepped down as Celsius CEO, is dumping his CEL tokens for USDC dollar-equivalent stablecoins. [Twitter, Twitter] 

Celsius cofounder Daniel Leon, who also just stepped down, sold $11.5 million worth of CEL in 2020 and 2021. [FT]

Jason Stone of KeyFi, a.k.a. DeFi whale 0x_b1, used to manage Celsius’ investments. Stone sued Celsius in July, saying they hadn’t paid him and called Celsius a Ponzi scheme. Celsius countersued in August, claiming Stone was an incompetent thief. Anyway, Celsius has just updated their counterclaim. [Complaint, PDF] 

Voyager Digital, FTX, and Texas

In a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the debtor has to file a disclosure statement with their bankruptcy plan. The statement needs to provide “adequate information” about the debtor’s financial affairs so creditors can make an informed decision when they go to vote on the bankruptcy plan. 

Voyager filed its first amended disclosure statement related to its second amended joint plan on October 5. The plan involves selling off all of its assets to FTX US. [Statement, PDF]

The US Trustee objected to Voyager’s disclosure statement. The plan doesn’t say it’s a liquidation plan, but the proposal is basically to liquidate Voyager. The plan also shields Voyager CEO Stephen Ehrlich and his assets from third-party claims. The Trustee wants clearer disclosure for creditors of precisely what this statement is. [Objection, PDF]  

The Texas State Securities Board objects to the sale of Voyager to FTX, “because, at this time, the Debtor and FTX are not in compliance with Texas law.” Texas thinks the plan “attempts to limit the Debtors’ liability for unlawful post-petition — but pre-sale closing — conduct for which state-regulatory fines and penalties may apply.” That is, they think the quick sale is an attempt to hide malfeasance. [Objection, PDF]

Specifically, Texas thinks FTX has been offering investment contracts that constitute unregistered securities to Texas residents. The affidavit from Joe Rotunda, Director of the TSSA Enforcement Division, details Texas’ ongoing case against Voyager since April 2022 for unlicensed offerings of securities — and then it gets stuck into FTX.

Rotunda states that the interest-bearing accounts offered by FTX US are likely unregistered securities. FTX US claims to be registered with FinCEN as a money transmitter — but it isn’t registered with Texas as a money transmitter. FTX Capital is registered with Texas as a broker-dealer, so that’s nice. 

The FTX trading app lets US customers use FTX non-US despite FTX Trading’s claims not to serve US customers, and despite Rotunda correctly entering his address as Austin, Texas. Rotunda transferred ether to a wallet on FTX. Rotunda is pretty sure the FTX (US or not) yield program is an investment contract and not a registered one.

Rotunda also confirms that “The Enforcement Division is now investigating FTX Trading, FTX US, and their principals, including Sam Bankman-Fried.” [Affidavit, PDF]

The lawyers want their money 

Bankruptcies are expensive. The professionals operating on behalf of Voyager Digital and Celsius Network have begun submitting their bills. 

Kirkland & Ellis in Voyager: $2,994,615.46 for July 5 to July 31. [Fee statement, PDF]

Kirkland & Ellis in Celsius: $2,570,322.67 for July 13 to July 31 July — yes, that’s only two and a half weeks. [Fee statement, PDF]

Akin Gump in Celsius: $741,898.56 for July 13 to Aug. 31. [Fee statement, PDF]

Alvarez & Marsal in Celsius: $2,961,249.80 for July 14 to Aug. 31. [Fee statement, PDF]

Other good news for crypto finance

South Korean crypto investment firm Blockwater Technologies defaulted on a loan from TrueFi, a decentralized lending protocol. TrueFi issued a “notice of default” to Blockwater on October 6 after Blockwater missed a payment on a loan of 3.4 million BUSD. TrueFi said the debt represents about 2% of its total outstanding value. Blockworks’ loan was “restructured” in August, and they paid back 654,000 BUSD at that time. TrueFi wants “a potential court-supervised administrative proceeding” —i.e., putting Blockwater into something like bankruptcy. [TrueFi blog; Bloomberg; Twitter]

Do Kwon is the founder of Terraform Labs, whose UST “stablecoin” collapsed in May, took the rest of crypto down with it, and started us on writing this newsletter series. Kwon talked to Laura Shin for her Unchained podcast on October 14 from a totally legitimate unknown location where he definitely isn’t on the run. The podcast comes out on October 18. [Twitter; Unchained]

Grayscale runs crypto investment funds, most notably GBTC, which Amy has dissected at length. Grayscale is now creating Grayscale Digital Infrastructure Opportunities, to buy up used bitcoin mining rigs from distressed mining companies. These will be used for mining by Foundry Digital, which is also owned by Grayscale owner Digital Currency Group. This will be made available as a fabulous investment opportunity to “accredited investors such as hedge funds and family offices at a minimum investment of $25,000.” [Bloomberg]

The Department of Justice has issued a new report on crypto crime: “The Role Of Law Enforcement In Detecting, Investigating, And Prosecuting Criminal Activity Related To Digital Assets.” This report was as required by President Biden’s March 2022 executive order on crypto. [DOJ, PDF]

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Bankrupt Voyager Digital’s search for a buyer — notes from the first committee town hall

If you are interested in Voyager Digital’s Chapter 11 proceedings, the official creditors’ committee town hall held on August 11 is a good one to watch. [YouTube, presentation]

The session was put on by committee lawyers Darren Azman, Chuck Gibbs, and Gregg Steinman; the committee’s financial advisor Michael Cordasco; and Jason Raznick, CEO of trading news site Benzinga, who is the chair of the creditors’ committee. 

Azman and Gibbs, both partners at McDermott Will & Emery, did most of the talking. 

The group outlined the bankruptcy process and offered a (very aggressive, perhaps overly optimistic) timeline for how things could pan out. What follows are a few notes I pulled from the meeting. Read through the entire creditor presentation for more. 

Seeking bids for a buyout

Voyager is soliciting bids from companies to acquire its assets. The creditors’ committee is actively involved in the process. A lot of conversations are happening behind the scenes. Formal bids are due on August 26; an auction will occur on August 29.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX offered a bid earlier, but the creditors’ committee pooh-poohed the bid. 

“I can tell you that FTX is not the only interested party. The company has received several indications of interest,” said Azman. He added that FTX’s offer was the lowest bid.

By the end of August, he said they should have a good idea of who the winning bidder is and the terms of the sale. 

Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Alameda Research have deep ties to Voyager and its bankruptcy wipeout, stretching back to mid-2021. In the Voyager bankruptcy, Alameda is a borrower, a lender, and a shareholder, so I expect FTX is going to have the strongest interest in purchasing Voyager.

A plan of reorganization

The conclusion of Chapter 11 ends with the confirmation of a plan, which could result in a reorganization — or a liquidation. Voyager has 120 days to come up with a plan, and creditors get to vote on whether to accept a plan.   

But before Voyager can put forth a plan for a vote, the company has to file a written disclosure statement, which the court then has to approve.

The disclosure statement is similar to a securities prospectus. It will contain detailed information about the debtor’s financial affairs, how it got into the mess in the first place, a description of its assets, and a description of claims and liabilities and how those claims will be handled. 

The disclosure statement will have a plan of reorganization attached to it, but the two are separate documents.

After Voyager files its disclosure statement, the court will hold a hearing to decide if the statement has adequate information. The plan must be feasible, meaning that after the plan is confirmed, it will not be followed by a plan to liquidate the company under Chapter 7. 

McDermott Will & Emery expect confirmation of a plan by the end of October and distribution of funds sometime in November. 

This is extremely optimistic! Large bankruptcy proceedings generally take years. In the case of QuadrigaCX, which went dark in early 2019, the creditors are still waiting for disbursement as everything is tied up with the Canada Revenue Agency, which insisted on doing its own audit. Similarly, Mt Gox fell apart in early 2014, and its creditors are also still waiting for their money. 

Voyager’s financials 

As of June 30, Voyager has total assets worth USD $1.26 billion:

  • Operating cash: $140 million  
  • Loan portfolio: $470 million 
  • Various crypto holdings: $655 million  

It has total claims so far of $1.8 billion, leaving a hole in its balance sheet of $550 million. 

These numbers do not include the $270 million in cash held in Metropolitan Commercial Bank’s FBO accounts. The numbers also don’t include the $650 million loan to Three Arrows Capital, which 3AC defaulted on. 

Voyager will need to dip into its operating cash to pay its employees and cover benefits and severance pay. Also, bankruptcies are expensive. As David Gerard and I mentioned in a recent crypto crash update, administrative costs could easily end up being $100 million or more. 

(You can read more about Voyager’s mess here.)

A possible interim distribution? 

The creditors’ committee is pursuing an interim distribution. This is rare and unusual, the lawyers explained in the town hall, and only Voyager can put the motion in front of the judge. 

Azman: “We have had productive conversations with Voyager about making an interim distribution and ultimately we are hopeful they will do so.” 

He says there is no guarantee that it will happen or that it will happen any faster than the plan approval.

I seriously doubt that it will happen at all, but we’ll see. 

Insider investigations

Before Voyager filed for bankruptcy, it formed a special committee of certain directors, Azman explained. Part of the special committee’s mandate is to investigate certain actions of insiders (directors and affiliates of Voyager) “with a particular focus on the loan that Voyager made to Three Arrows Capital.”

The special committee retained a separate law firm to handle the investigation. Ultimately, the special committee will produce a report that presents their views on whether insiders are liable for any wrongdoing. 

“It should not surprise any of you to hear that we, the creditors’ committee, believe preliminarily that there are a number of people and companies that may be liable for wrongdoing and should and will be held accountable,” said Azman. “Thus we are conducting our own investigation of insiders and their potential wrongdoing.” 

If the Voyager special committee concludes there are no claims against insiders then Voyager will seek to release those insiders from all liability under their Chapter 11 claim, he warned.

Azman went on to explain that if Voyager succeeds in doing that, the creditors’ committee will not be able to pursue claims that the company has against those insiders. 

“If the creditors’ committee disagrees with the special committee’s conclusions, we will recommend to creditors that they vote to reject any plan that attempts to release insiders so that they do not receive releases. And second, we will reject the confirmation of the plan on the grounds that the releases are improper.” 

Azman and Gibbs say they’ll be putting on more town halls in the near future to keep Voyager creditors updated on the case. 

Claims are due October 3 and McDermott Will & Emery are posting key documents on their website.

If you like my work, consider supporting my writing by subscribing to my Patreon account for as little as $5 a month. 

Posted on by Amy Castor 0

Crypto collapse: 3AC, Voyager, Celsius, and other DeFi casualties

Crypto contagion

The price of Bitcoin has bobbled along above $20,000 since mid-June. There seems to be serious interest in keeping it above that number!

Sam Bankman-Fried has been playing the J. Pierpont Morgan of crypto, rescuing sinking companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto assets. His companies FTX and Alameda have so far bailed out Voyager Digital and BlockFi. He says he’s got a few billion left to keep other crypto companies from slipping into the dark abyss of liquidation. [Financial Post]  

All Bankman-Fried can do is buy time. The entire cryptosystem is imploding. People are finally realizing that most of the money they thought they had in crypto was imaginary. You didn’t lose money in the crash — you lost your money when you bought crypto.  

We’ve been busy keeping up with the fallout, and mining comedy gold. Who thought staying poor would be this much fun? It was nice of the coiners to suggest it.

The liquidation of Three Arrows Capital

Three Arrows Capital (3AC) went into liquidation as of June 27. Two applications were filed in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) where 3AC is incorporated — one by 3AC themselves, and the other, a provisional liquidation, by 3AC creditor Deribit. [LinkedIn]

In a liquidation, a liquidator is appointed to tally up all the assets of a company and distribute them to creditors. It’s the end of the company. Provisional liquidation is not quite the end yet — it’s like bankruptcy protection, even though you know the company is probably insolvent. Wassielawyer has a great thread explaining all this. [Twitter thread]

Why would 3AC petition to liquidate themselves? CEO Zhu Su has shamelessly listed himself as a creditor in the liquidation!

Teneo is the court-appointed liquidator. They’ll be assessing the assets and the claims against the company and its directors. 

The liquidators are able to convert any crypto assets into US dollars. This could mean a few billion dollars worth of bitcoin getting dumped any day now — or maybe not, if 3AC’s own bitcoin wallets turn out to be empty. 

Less than a week later, 3AC filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the US on July 1. 3AC’s assets are (likely) not in BVI, but in the US and Singapore. Chapter 15 allows the BVI court to be recognized in the US — and protects US assets during the liquidation process. [Bloomberg, archive; bankruptcy filing, PDF] 

According to its bankruptcy filing, 3AC had $3 billion under management in April 2022. Analytics firm Nansen reported the company held $10 billion in assets in March. Money disappears fast in crypto land! [Bloomberg]

Also according to the filing — and we’re sure this is fine! — 3AC’s two founders have gone missing: “Mr. Davies and Mr. Zhu’s current location remains unknown. They are rumored to have left Singapore.” 

The last we heard from Zhu Su on Twitter was a vague tweet on June 14 — “We are in the process of communicating with relevant parties and fully committed to working this out” — a month after the Terra Luna collapse, which set this entire cascade of dominoes falling. [Twitter]

Zhu is currently trying to offload a bungalow in Singapore that he bought in December for SGD$48.8 million (USD$35 million). The house is held in his son’s trust. [Bloomberg]

Fatmanterra (who is pretty on the ball) says he heard Zhu is planning to transfer the funds from the sale of the bungalow to a bank account in Dubai and has no intention of paying creditors with the proceeds. [Twitter]

3AC has other troubles, such as a probe by Singapore’s central bank. The Monetary Authority of Singapore said that 3AC provided them with false information, failed to meet regulatory requirements when moving fund management to the BVI, and ignored limits on assets under management. They weren’t supposed to manage more than SGD$250 million (about $178 million). [MAS press release, PDF; Blockworks]

Oh, look! 3AC’s money has an over-the-counter trading desk: Tai Ping Shan (TPS) Capital. 3AC seems to have a bunch of money sheltered in this entity, and TPS is still trading despite the liquidation order! Sources told Coindesk that TPS was “where the action was” for 3AC,  and where most of 3AC’s treasury is held and traded.

TPS insists it’s completely independent of 3AC, even though Zhu and Davies of 3AC are still part-owners, and the companies have long had multiple links. [CoinDesk; Twitter; CoinDesk]

Peckshield noticed that on 4 July, 3AC transferred $30 million in stablecoins to Kucoin — 10 million USDT and 20 million USDC. This is after the firm was ordered to liquidate. [Twitter]

Rumor has it that 3AC also looked to crypto whales for loans. [Twitter]

3AC also owns a bunch of NFTs — because we all know that NFTs are a great investment and very liquid. [Twitter]

Big plans for Voyager Digital (in bankruptcy)

Less than a week after crypto lender Voyager halted withdrawals, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York on July 5. [Filing; press release; Ehrlich Twitter thread; FT] 

Voyager says it has $110 million of cash and “owned crypto assets” on hand, plus $1.3 billion in crypto assets on its platform. It owes nearly $1 million to Google and $75 million to Alameda Research — which recently threw Voyager a lifeline of $485 million. The rest of its large unsecured creditors are customers.

Alameda says it’s “happy to return the Voyager loan and get our collateral back whenever works for Voyage” — we’re not even sure what that means. [Tweet]

Voyager holds $350 million of customer money in an omnibus account at Metropolitan Commercial Bank — just an undifferentiated pile of cash, with only Voyager knowing which customers’ money it is. The judge says “That money belongs to those customers and will go to those customers” — but the company will have to sort through who owns what and conduct a “fraud prevention process” (KYC, we presume) first. [Bloomberg, archive]

Voyager sent its customers an email stressing that it’s not going out of business — it has a plan! [Reddit]

“Under this Plan, which is subject to change given ongoing discussions with other parties, and requires Court approval, customers with crypto in their account(s) will receive in exchange a combination of the crypto in their account(s), proceeds from the 3AC recovery, common shares in the newly reorganized Company, and Voyager tokens. The plan contemplates an opportunity for customers to elect the proportion of common equity and crypto they will receive, subject to certain maximum thresholds.”

Instead of getting your crypto back, you’ll get a corn beef hash of magic beans, and we’ll call that money, okay?

The only issues here are that future Voyager tokens, future proceeds from the 3AC recovery, and future equity in the reorganized company will all be close to worthless.

Putting this nonsense through the bankruptcy court will take months, and Voyager customers get to stand back and watch in horror as the value of their crypto plummets to nothing. Look what’s happened to Mt. Gox customers — they are still waiting.

Jim Chanos weighs in on Voyager’s apparently false claims that its money is FDIC insured: “Making false claims to attract depositors/investors is financial fraud, plain and simple. No regulatory jurisdiction tug-of-war need come into play here, if true.” [Twitter]

The FDIC is also looking into Voyager’s FDIC claims. [WSJ]

Patrick McKenzie writes one of his informative blog posts on money transfer systems, this time explaining what a deposit is — and what a deposit isn’t. Unsurprisingly, he rapidly gets to our friends at Voyager Not-A-Bank. [Kalzumeus]

Voyager is just trying to buy time. But given their apparently false claims of FDIC insurance, the odds they can get a judge to let them avoid liquidation this way are zero.

When the accountants get hold of the books and start going through everything, the real story will be shocking. We saw all this happen with QuadrigaCX.

Voyager stock trading was halted on the Toronto Stock Exchange, after the bankruptcy filing. [Newswire] 

Cornell Law professor Dan Awry writes: “If you thought securities regulation was a jolt to the crypto community, just wait until they learn about bankruptcy law.” [Twitter]

Here’s a Voyager ad preying on artists. Why be a poor artist when you can get rich for free by handing them your crypto? [YouTube]

And here’s a Twitter thread detailing Voyager’s shenanigans in getting a public listing in the first place. They bought a shell company and did a reverse-merger — and then pumped the stock, only to dump it during crypto’s bull run. [Twitter thread]  

It’s worth a closer look at just how much ickiness from Voyager the Metropolitan Commercial Bank risks getting on itself. Dig page 30 of this March 2022 investor presentation, talking up Metropolitan’s foray into crypto customers. The presentation mentions elsewhere how Metropolitan wants to get into crypto. [Investor presentation] 

Celsius: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead!

Celsius Network Ltd. has a new board of directors. They’re all bankruptcy attorneys. [Companies House]

But Celsius is not bankrupt yet! As such! In fact, Celsius is still paying debts! If selectively. Though paying down debts is likely a sign that Celsius is getting its books in order before filing for bankruptcy.

Celsius has repaid $150 million worth of DAI to MakerDAO. Celsius still owes MakerDAO about $82 million in DAI. [FXEmpire]

On July 4, Celsius took out 67,000 ETH ($72 million) from Aave (30,000 ETH) and Compound (37,000 ETH). [Etherscan; Peckshield; Tweet]

Celsius has laid off 150 employees. [Ctech]

Let’s keep in mind that Celsius isn’t just about crypto bros wrecking each other. Celsius investors were lied to and stolen from: “Celsius customers losing hope for locked up crypto.” [WSJ]

Celsius’ CEO has a book on Amazon — you know, in case anyone felt they needed the financial wisdom of Alex Mashinsky in their life. What editor at Wiley thought this was a good decision? “This book belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in financial independence, cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, blockchain, or the battle between decentralization and centralization.” Also, how to take everyone’s money and lose it playing the DeFi markets. [Amazon]

KeyFi sues Celsius: I’m shocked, shocked to find that Ponziing is going on in here!

0x_b1 was a crypto whale, active on Twitter, who traded vast sums of crypto in the DeFi markets. He was the third-largest DeFi user at one point, with only Alameda Research and Justin Sun doing larger volumes. 0x_b1 was highly respected, yet nobody knew who he was or where he got his wealth from — until now.

0x_b1 turns out to be Jason Stone, the CEO of trading firm KeyFi, a.k.a. Battlestar Capital, who says that KeyFi managed Celsius’ DeFi portfolio from 2020 to 2021. The cryptos that 0x_b1 traded were hundreds of millions of dollars (in crypto) of Celsius customer funds.

As Battlestar Capital, Stone first hooked up with Celsius in March 2019. Battlestar said that customers could earn an astonishing “up to 30 percent” annually from staking their cryptos. [CoinDesk, 2019]

Jason Stone and KeyFi are now suing Celsius, saying they never got paid. A case was filed 7 July by Stone’s attorney, Kyle Roche of Roche Freedman. The complaint is incendiary. [complaint, PDF]

Celsius saw DeFi take off in 2020. Celsius figured they could use customer funds to play the markets and make some yield, so they hired KeyFi to trade for them, with a handshake agreement to share the “hundreds of millions of dollars in profits” —  rather than anything so trad-fi as, e.g., a written contract. (They did finally write up contracts after KeyFi had been working for Celsius for six months.)

Celsius invested cryptos, and its liabilities to customers were denominated in cryptos — but Celsius accounted for everything in US dollars. So if an asset appreciated, Celsius and KeyFi might show a dollar profit — but Celsius might not be able to repurchase the ETH or whatever, to return it to the customer who lent it to them, without losing money to do so.

KeyFi says it would have been trivial to hedge against such an event by purchasing call options at the spot price it originally paid. KeyFi says that Celsius didn’t do this — but told KeyFi it had. It’s not clear why KeyFi didn’t just do something similar themselves.

Celsius gave customers a higher yield for accepting payment in their own CEL tokens. The yield was calculated in dollars. Stone alleges that Celsius used customer bitcoins to pump the price of CEL through 2020, meaning they paid out less CEL for a given dollar yield.

Alex Mashinksy also sold $45 million of his personal CEL holding during this time.

“The Celsius Ponzi Scheme” starts on page 23 of the complaint. Celsius had liabilities to customers denominated in ETH — but bitcoin and ether prices started going up dizzyingly in January 2021:

“87. As customers sought to withdraw their ether deposits, Celsius was forced to buy ether in the open market at historically high prices, suffering heavy losses. Faced with a liquidity crisis, Celsius began to offer double-digit interest rates in order to lure new depositors, whose funds were used to repay earlier depositors and creditors. Thus, while Celsius continued to market itself as a transparent and well capitalized business, in reality, it had become a Ponzi scheme.”

Jason Stone and KeyFi quit in March 2021. 

In September 2021, Roche wrote demanding a full accounting from Celsius, and all the money that Celsius hadn’t paid KeyFi. This was the start of the present action, and this is what KeyFi is suing over.

This suit is important because it sets out a clear claim that Celsius operated as a Ponzi scheme. If the courts find that Celsius was in fact a Ponzi, then any money or cryptos that Celsius paid out to customers or some creditors could be clawed back in bankruptcy.

Stone is seeking damages for an amount “to be determined at trial.”

It’s not clear that Stone was as great a trader as he paints himself. A report from Arkham details how Stone racked up $350 million in losses. [Arkham, PDF]

CoinFLEX

We’ve been watching online interviews with Mark Lamb of CoinFLEX, which stopped withdrawals after $47 million of bitcoin cash (BCH) went missing.

Lamb, who appears alone in the interviews, keeps saying “we” and referring to his “team.” His wife is the chief marketing officer of CoinFLEX and Sudhu Arumugam is listed as a cofounder, but where’s the rest of the team?

How Lamb’s business really works: [Twitter]

  1. Create fictitious dollars (FlexUSD).
  2. Lock them up in a lending scheme.
  3. Offer unsustainably high yields to attract retail deposits. 

CoinFLEX had a special deal with CoinFLEX investor Roger Ver, where it would not liquidate Ver’s account in the event of a margin call — a highly risky proposition for Coinflex.

Ver had taken a large long position in BCH, which was losing value. [Twitter] Lamb claims Ver needed to deposit $47 million to meet a margin call.

But it looks like Lamb liquidated Ver’s BCH anyway by selling it on Binance, even though he’s claimed to know nothing of this. CoinFLEX claims that Ver owes them $47 million, while Ver considers that Lamb broke their agreement.

Lamb lent one-third of all CoinFLEX’s customer money to one guy. Now, with the “significant loss in liquidating his significant FLEX coin positions,” the deficit for Ver’s account is $84 million. CoinFLEX says that they’ve brought an arbitration against Ver in Hong Kong. It will take 12 months to get a judgment. [blog post]

Meanwhile, CoinFLEX are … issuing a new coin (rvUSD), out of thin air, to pay back their existing customers.

Lamb explained his incredible plan to rescue CoinFLEX in an interview with Ash Bennington on Real Vision. Lamb refused to reveal how big the hole in his books actually is. “I can’t comment on those specific figures at this time.” [Twitter]

But creditors will be made whole and transparency will come — in the fabulous future, along with an audit! 

Lamb’s plan includes issuing rvUSD, a debt token. You get 20% returns — also to be paid in rvUSD. Lamb says the returns will be funded by Ver paying the money, which Ver still maintains he doesn’t owe.

Lamb has clearly thought all of this through carefully with his “team.” Their hard work is apparent — the rvUSD whitepaper is three pages long. [Whitepaper, PDF]

Who would want to buy rvUSD? Lamb told Bennington he has lots of “big” investors lined up. CoinFLEX says it will resume 10% of withdrawals in a week and everyone will get their money as soon as these big investors come through. 

There are 197 million FlexUSD tokens in the wild, according to Coingecko. Even if Ver owes $47 million, there should still be a difference of $150 million in collateral there — if FlexUSD is indeed fully backed by USDC, as Lamb claims it is. Additionally, CoinFLEX still has $10 million of BCH held for its bridge to its SmartBCH chain. And there are user deposits on the exchange.

So what percentage of assets does CoinFLEX still have? Why won’t they release assets and liabilities?

Other legitimate trading firms that are definitely stable going concerns

BlockFi: BlockFi and FTX reached a deal on 1 July, where FTX will buy BlockFi for a “variable price of up to $240 million based on performance triggers” that will provide Blockfi with a $400 million credit facility.  [BlockFi; Twitter thread]

Babel: Orthogonal Trading issued a default to defunct DeFi lender Babel regarding a $10 million loan. [Twitter]

Genesis: Genesis is one of the largest cryptocurrency brokerages for institutional investors. The company confirmed speculation that it had exposure to 3AC. Genesis is part of Digital Currency Group, who put in some cash to prop them up. [Bloomberg; Twitter]  

Blockchain.com: another crypto exchange that thought playing the DeFi markets with customer funds was a good and cool idea. They lost $270 million in loans to 3AC. They told shareholders: “Three Arrows is rapidly becoming insolvent and the default impact is approximately $270 million worth of cryptocurrency and U.S. dollar loans from Blockchain.com.” [CoinDesk]

Uprise: Korean crypto startup Uprise lost $20 million shorting luna in May. They were right about luna — but their short was wiped out anyway, by a sudden spike in the price. [The Block]

CoinLoan: Crypto lender CoinLoan restricted withdrawal limits on 4 July — from $500,000 per day down to only $5,000 per day. They are calling this a “temporary change” to withdrawal limits. Presumably, it’s “temporary” because it will soon be $0. [Tweet; Bitfinex Tweet] 

They directly say this is because of “a spike in withdrawals of assets from CoinLoan.” How dare you try to get your funds out! [blog, archive]

Nexo: has signed a term sheet to acquire 100% of defunct Indian crypto exchange Vauld. It’s not clear what’s left in Vauld, or if Nexo thinks they can pillage the corpse but pretend Vauld’s considerable liabilities to customers don’t exist. [Coindesk]

Our friend Michel does the numbers. He estimates $300 million was lost by Vauld in the UST/luna collapse. [Twitter]

Bitcoin Core ETP: this is an exchange-traded product, a bit like a bitcoin ETF, but based in Switzerland. How does the ETP plan to make money? By lending out the bitcoins on the DeFi markets! That will definitely work out fine, probably. [FT, paywalled]

Posted on by Amy Castor 2